Hearers But..!!!1st Sunday of Hatour

St. Isidore

Anyone who wants to be always united to God must pray often and read the Bible

often. For in prayer it is we who are speaking

to God, but in the readings it is God speaking to us. 

Curious Hearers

For all the Athenians and the foreigners who were there spent their

time in nothing else but either to tell or to hear some new thing.

Acts 17:21

Immature Hearers12 For though by this time you ought to be teachers, you need someone to teach

you again the first principles of the oracles of God; and you have come to need milk and not solid food. 13 For

everyone who partakes only of milk is unskilled in the word of righteousness,

for he is a babe. 14 But solid food belongs to those who are of full age,

that is, those who by reason of use have their senses exercised to discern both

good and evil. Heb 5:12-14

Habitual hearers31 So they come to you as people do, they sit before you as My people, and they hear your words, but they do not do them; for with their mouth they show much love, but their hearts pursue their own gain. 32 Indeed you are to them as a very lovely song of one who has a pleasant voice and can play well on an instrument; for they hear your words, but they do not do them. Eze 33:31,32

Hearers to what they want

For the time will come when they will not endure sound doctrine, but according to their own desires, because they have itching ears, they will heap up for themselves

teachers; 4 and they will turn their ears away from the

truth, and be turned aside to fables. 2 Ti 4:3,4

Discerning hearer Beloved, do not believe every

spirit, but test the spirits, whether they are of God;

because many false prophets have gone out into the world.

2 By this you know the Spirit of God: Every spirit that confesses

that Jesus Christ has come in the flesh is of God, 1 Jn 4:1,2

 But even if we, or an angel from heaven, preach any other gospel to you than what we have preached to you, let him be accursed. Gal 1:8

These were more fair-minded than those in Thessalonica, in that they received the word with all readiness, and searched the Scriptures daily to find out whether these things were so. Acts 17:11

Origen (185?-252)

“No man ought, for the confirmation of

doctrines, to use books which are not

canonized Scriptures,”

(Tract. 26 in Matt.).

Reverent hearers

For this reason we also thank God without

ceasing, because when you received the word of

God which you heard from us, you welcomed it not as the word of men, but as it is in truth, the word

of God, which also effectively works in you who believe. 1 Th 2:13

Obedient Hearers

“Not everyone who says to Me, ‘Lord,

Lord,’ shall enter the kingdom of heaven, but he who does the will of My Father in heaven. Matt 7:21

St Jerome

 `Let us study while we are on earth

that Reality which will stay in our

minds also when we are in heaven.'