If today you hear his voice, harden not your heart.

This voice, God’s voice, is a beautiful voice. It can, in a flash of light, shatter my slumber and awaken my spirit to life. It can penetrate to the very core of my darkness and hardness of heart and blast it all to pieces.

Listen to this mysterious voice, this word which has astounded you and broken down your barriers, this word that has proclaimed to your very depths, "I love you."

For this is what God is saying to us through beauty. Is it any wonder that something inside of us, something beyond our control, responds and leaps for joy when we are touched by beauty?

We are made for love! If today you hear his voice, harden not your heart! Music bears this voice in a most fantastic way.

By its very nature, music touches our emotions, our minds, and our souls. It thus possesses a great power—the power to lead us to life or to death. It can plunge us to the depths of hell or raise us to the splendor of heaven. It can lead us to perform heroic deeds, or it can plunge us into despair. It can move us to goodness, forgiveness, joy, compassion, grief, sorrow, repentance and conversion.

Or it can move us to anger or hatred. It can dull, blind, and deafen us, or it can open us up and arouse our senses to the presence of Beauty, which is God.

Archbishop Raya often said, "We become what we contemplate." The choice is then yours. Do you want beauty, truth, and goodness? Then let beautiful music enter your ears and heart.

So what should we listen to? What specific kind of music? We are all different, and we will respond differently to different kinds of music. The range is as wide as the universe.

There is probably a different "tune" for each human being on the face of the planet, each human being who has ever lived, each human being who will ever come into being.

What is your "tune"?

Listen! Listen and see how music affects your mind, your heart, your emotions, and, yes, your very soul. Does a particular kind of music open you up to life? Does it lead you to compassion for the pains of your brothers and sisters? Does it give you something good to ponder? Does it lead you to peace, to silence, to prayer? Does it lead you to rejoicing and celebrating, to embracing and facing life?

Or does it close you in upon yourself? Does it trap you in illusions? Does it fill you with bitterness or violence? Does it burden your spirit and violate your integrity?

Listen and be ruthlessly honest with yourself. There is so much beauty to be embraced, received, discovered, and lived. Let your heart breathe and live. We become what we contemplate.

Good music for me might be a good country western ballad, and for you, a piece of folk or popular music. For someone else, it might be a Renaissance piece or a symphony by a great composer or the most sublime sacred music chanted by a choir in a cathedral or by monks in a monastery.

As you listen, let your heart yearn for this Lord who has embraced every bit and facet of our life and drama. In all music, seek the face of the Lord and yearn for him.

Finally, music can, or should, lead us to silence, the silence of God. Silence is not, as we sometimes think, something placid and empty, lifeless and boring.

Just as white is the unity of all color, and has the potential for an explosion of color, so in silence is born the expression of all music.

Silence is filled with the most beautiful of melodies. In fact, silence is in itself music, the most profound of all music, and perhaps the most life-giving. For in it abides the Word of Life.