NOTES for Ti2 4:3-4

What a miracle took place on the day when each of us heard the news of Christ and met Him Himself! For, as the apostle Paul writes, almost every person is inclined to 'choose teachers for themselves who will flatter their hearing' (2 Tim 4:3). But by the wondrous mercy and love of God these barriers are broken - and the heart is set free to listen and to learn what truth is. The conversion of each of us is truly a gift of God, a miracle over which the angels rejoice (see Luke 15:10). And it is the Lord who brings us to Himself, patiently awaiting the moment of our meeting.

But Paul writes the lines of today's reading precisely to warn us. How often, after finally meeting God and living for some time in the life of the Church, a person begins to consider himself 'knowledgeable,' and at times more knowledgeable than someone else! This can certainly be true, but how easy it is to slide from the feeling of being more experienced and wise into the pitiful state in which you already 'know' everything better than others and think there is no need to listen to them...

Yes, that is an extreme, but more often it happens just as the apostle writes: 'they will turn their ears away from the truth and turn aside to fables' (2 Tim 4:4). After all, how much more pleasant it is to listen to those who say what is pleasing to your own dear soul; in reality, you are listening only to yourself, carefully filtering the information that comes in...