NOTES for Gen 49:2
We rarely listen for and rarely hear God's voice. But sometimes we do hear it. The Lord speaks with us, and we begin to understand what His will is for us. We meet Him, learn to trust Him. But if we meet Him only when we are alone and do not seek the community, the Church, if by our own choice we remain alone, there is a danger that in a moment of temptation, in some difficult period of our life, we will forget that meeting, stop doing what God commanded us, or even decide that this Meeting was only a dream.
But when in the Church we gather together, and the Lord comes to us, to His one people, and remains among us, we can always bear witness to one another if someone has doubts: "The Lord was among us that day." Sometimes the Lord speaks to us through the priest's sermon in our church. And if we are together, when one of us acts badly, another can remind him of the words of the sermon we heard together. A word heard together can give more strength than something that was revealed to us in solitude, though this is not always so. "Gather together and listen."