The key to all spirituality is listening. We come to know ourselves and God by listening to our hearts and souls in the silence of prayer. We can come to know a great deal about ourselves by listening to what our enemies have to say about us. Bonds of love and friendship are built as we listen to another and as we are heard by another. How good it feels to be heard! It is no wonder that at the heart of the Hebrew Scriptures –at the center of the Law, we find the word שְׁמַ֖ע shema. It simply means “hear.” Shema can also translate as “listen” “be heard” “understand” and has the expectation with it “to obey” to act upon what one hears. Consequently, shema in the Hebrew Bible always has an active element, because for the Jewish people words always have a reality behind them, an event or an action. Hence, the Hebrew understanding of a word is that it is based within an experience. It represents an event in time and not merely an abstract concept. God is speaks to the Israelites and forms the primary relationship with the LORD in the covenant by giving them “the words upon my mouth” (Exod 34:27). God calls them back to a unified society centered in its worship of the LORD by keeping the Covenant through the unifying sound of the spoken words of the LORD, the Ten Commandments, coming to them through the theophany on Mount Sinai.
Jesus himself being a devote Jew understood this concept of the Hebrew Bible perfectly and taught it to the crowds in the form of the Parable of the Two Sons (Matt 21:28-32). In this parable the father gives an order for his sons to work in the vineyard. One son says “yes” I will go and does not go, because he is not really listening to the father’s request, nor does he want to be bothered with the burden of carrying out the work that was asked of him by his father. While the other said “no” because he really heard what this would require of him and in the end he acts according to the father’s will once he can accept the duty that was requested of him. In the end Jesus sharply corrects the religious authorities who had come to question Jesus’ authority by saying, “tax collectors and prostitutes are entering the kingdom of God before you” (Matt 21:31), implying that the chief priests and elders have not really “heard” the word that God has spoken. Consequently, the religious leaders where not capable of carrying out God’s Will, nor leading others to do so.
The Great Shema
Central to Jewish life and worship is what is known as “the great shema.” This is the title given to the most significant passage in the Hebrew Bible for the Jewish people. In the Hebrew it appears as
(Deut 6:4). שְׁמַ֖ע יִשְׂרָאֵ֑ל יְהוָ֥ה אֱלֹהֵ֖ינוּ יְהוָ֥ה׀ אֶחָֽד׃
Commonly it is translated, “Hear, O Israel! The LORD is our God, the LORD alone! The centrality of this verse can be seen in the actual type of the Biblia Hebraica Stuttgartensia. The last letter of the first and last word of this verse is enlarged to draw attention to the importance of this line of Sacred Scripture. This is the only verse in the whole Hebrew Bible where letters are enlarged as the ע and דare done here. This indicates the primacy of this verse in Jewish spirituality, because it expresses the first and greatest commandment to love God above all things. In the Hebrew Bible numbers have meaning, seven is a number of perfection, ten of completion and forty indicates special preparation. The number one points out what is fundamentally most important –what is first priority. In Deut 6:4 אֶחָֽד means “one.” אֶחָֽד also appears after the creation of light and separating it from the darkness. Genesis 1:5 states, “God called the light day, and the darkness God called night. And there was evening and there was morning, day one.” Thus, indicating the most fundamentally important aspect to creation was the creation and separation of light from the darkness. St. John the Evangelist perceives this important religious theme of light and darkness when he writes of Jesus, “the true light, which enlightens everyone, was coming into the world. He was in the world, and the world came to be through him, but the world did not know him” (Jn 1: 9-10). Thus, in the Great Shema highlighted are the words hear and one. Hear that God is first! God alone!
Blessed Mary of Jesus the Good Shepherd, understood this passage well. In her own words she was often quoted as saying, “God Alone!” Likewise, she too, placed obedience above all other virtues, as her motto in Latin was fiat voluntuas tua, or in English “your (God’s) will be done.” Blessed Mary’s spirituality was based on a very Jewish concept of spirituality that of the shema. Maybe this came from her countless hours of meditation on the Holy Family of Nazareth. Maybe the “Jewish-ness” of Jesus, Mary and Joseph, began to permeate her thinking. The Great Shema certainly fits her spirituality of placing God first in her life and doing whatever the Lord asked of her.