1. Listening, for those who train others, requires a "time educational", necessary to give way in the other to a new knowledge, which entails a change of dispositions and attitudes.

During this time, authority must be combined with attention and closeness, patience and mercy. The relationship between these two poles, authority and closeness or affection, is decided in the profound relationship between truth and love.

The educator must learn to listen. The reality staff of their students (their lives in their contexts) asks to be listened to and "obeyed", that is, attended to, reflected upon, responded to. And not only at the beginning or in an isolated activity, but continuously and as a dimension of the whole educational task. In this way the educator learns, and one can only educate if one learns, among other things, to listen. And if he is listened to and listened to, even if he does not realize it, the one who learns also teaches the one who educates him.

Many things are learned or deepened only when they are heard from others, or even when one expresses them oneself to others. Hence the importance of the family and groups in any educational task.

2. Well, as happens with the knowledge proper to love, faith is a listening staff, united to adhesion, to the search for union and to the following (cf. Jn 1:37; 10:3-5).

The Bible presents faith first and foremost as a gift from God, and also as "listening" on the part of man. The knowledge of faith - as we have seen since Abraham - is linked to the covenant of a faithful God. The living God establishes a relationship of love with man and addresses to him the Word that personally challenges the listener.

This is why St. Paul says with an expression that has become a classic: fides ex auditu, "faith is born of the message that is heard" (Rom 10:17). Faith is trust and response, which comes from trusting God and therefore listening to him. And thus to be available to allow oneself to be transformed again and again by God's call (cf. encyclical Lumen fidei, nn. 13 and 29).

Because faith is listening, it is also a response, which translates into coherence of life before God and in the form of advertisement addressed to others. Thus the Christian collaborates, with his word, in the transmission of the faith. Now, the first "word" is authenticity, the coherence of one's own life.

That the word, especially that of the educator in the faith, must be accompanied and, even more, preceded by life, is a reflection of the "divine pedagogy. God has statement to men "by word and deed" (Vatican Council II, Const. Dei Verbum, 14). And Jesus "did and taught" (Acts 1:1). Thus the events of salvation history (for example, among the people of Israel), and even more so the events of the life of Jesus Christ, are like the first "words" of God, which are then explained by the prophets and above all by Jesus, who is the Word made flesh.

In this way the works performed by God and especially by Christ manifest and confirm the realities that doctrine or words signify. In turn, the words proclaim and clarify the mystery contained in the divine work.

For example, the crossing of the Red Sea was a prefiguration of the salvation that Christ brought through Baptism, the sacrament that makes us children of God in his Son, as Christ himself taught us by wanting to be baptized by John and by speaking to us of being reborn of water and the Spirit (Jn 3:5).

Words and deeds, deeds and words. For this reason, the teachings of the educator in the faith cannot be separated from the authenticity and coherence of his Christian life and conduct. A catechist or a teacher of Religion who teaches something different from what he lives or tries to live would be useless. The Education in the faith, as part of evangelization, is at the same time witness and advertisement, word and sacrament, teaching and commitment.

That faith is listening means that it comes from another and not from oneself. As a response, faith is part of a dialogue; dialogue with God and dialogue with others. Christian faith opens to prayer and also manifests itself in confessing or professing faith: one can only respond "I believe" in the context of "we believe"; that is, in the "we" of the family of God which is the Church (cf. Encyclical Lumen Fidei, n. 39).

Trust between people is fundamental in human life and without it there would be no society. In the sphere of the Christian faith, the listener recognizes the contents of the faith, that is, the knowledge proper to the faith that leads to love of God and neighbor. He accepts all this in freedom and follows it in obedience (from the Latin: ob-audire, to know how to listen). This is why St. Paul speaks of the "obedience of faith" (Rom 1:5; 16:26). The Church's Magisterium is reliable because it itself relies on the Word of God which it hears, guards and expounds (cf. Lumen fidei, 49; Dei Verbum 10).

Faith requires a time for the Word to be proclaimed and heard. It is the time of following, listening and responding. It is the "time educational" of faith, the time that requires to become position of truth, goodness and beauty. The educator of faith must be patient and merciful. To know how to wait, to forgive, to start over and over again, to ask for light in order to get it right, to rectify when necessary, always seeking the good and nothing but the good for those who are entrusted to him.

3. "Hear O Israel" (cf. Dt 6:4) is the origin of the Jewish prayer of the Shema, recorded in the Bible. Jesus also listens and learns from Mary and Joseph. Then he listens to the disciples in order to teach them, to the sick and the helpless, the poor and sinners, in order to help them. He listens in silence to Pilate and to those who mistreat him. And he always listens, above all, to his Father in the dialogue of prayer. Jesus, who is the eternal Word of the Father, always wants to listen to him, to be united to him by Love and to manifest this love to the world.

Following the example of Jesus and united to Him, the educator in the faith - father or mother of a family, catechist, teacher or professor, formator - must listen daily to God in prayer. In this way he or she can discern His will, His ways, His lessons, for oneself and for others. 

And in this way, especially here, in the Education of faith, we see that everyone teaches and everyone learns. One or the other "obeys" in different ways. The educator is a special point of reference, because of his gifts and training, which make him more manager before God, the Church and society.

We said that many things are learned or deepened only when they are heard from others, or even when one expresses them oneself to others. This is even more important in the Education of faith, since faith comes largely by hearing. And it is received, lived and transmitted in the family of God, the Church. And it has cultural, social and ecclesial consequences. We must learn to listen to the faith in the family.

Listening to others, in order to be able to help them, is part of listening to reality in order to understand it. And here it is a matter of doing it always from faith, in faith, listening to the Holy Spirit in order to second his inspirations.