PREACHING the Word of God is a task
entrusted to his
apostles and shared by all of us in different ways. The clergy take a
leading role in this affair. It’s a serious business that involves our
whole being, and not just our talents and powers.
First we need to examine our understanding and attitude
toward God’s word, especially the Gospel. On this basic understanding
would depend what we do with the Gospel and how we handle it.
Do we really know the true nature of the Gospel? Or do we
take it as just one more book, perhaps with certain importance, but
definitely not as the living word of God, in spite of its human
dimensions?
The Gospel is actually the proclamation of Christ as the
Emmanuel, that is, God with us. This is an on-going affair that did
not stop with the death of Christ. Christ lives with us up to now, and
continues to do things with us.
All these affirmations are captured in the last lines of
the Gospel of St. Matthew where our Lord said:
“Go, therefore, and teach all nations, baptizing them….
And behold I am with you all days, even to the consummation of the
world.” (28,19-20)
Our Catechism tells us that “We must continue to
accomplish in ourselves the stages of Jesus’ life and his mysteries
and often to beg him to perfect and realize them in us and in his
whole Church” (521)
Obviously, to carry out this mission, we need to know our
Lord and his teachings. We have to go to him and read the Gospel.
Reading and meditating on it should be a regular practice for us, a
habit meant to keep us in touch with him.
Thus, every time we read the Gospel, we have to understand
by our faith that we are engaging with our Lord in an actual and
living way. We are listening to him, and somehow seeing him. We can
use our imagination to make ourselves as one more character in any
scene depicted by the Gospel.
For this, we need to look for the appropriate time and
place. We have to be wary of our tendency to be dominated by a
lifestyle of activism and pragmatism that would blunt our need for
recollection and immersion in the life of Christ.
The drama of Christ’s life here on earth has to continue
in our own life. Thus, we need to continually conform our mind and
heart to the Gospel, an affair that demands everything from us.
Our problem is that the Gospel has ceased to be what it
ought to be to many people. It has been downgraded as one more book
among many others that we have. And worse, since it does not give us
immediate practical knowledge, many of us give it low priority.
For us priests, especially, we need to internalize it, not
in the way an actor internalizes his script. We internalize it by
making it the very life of our mind and heart, the very impulse of our
emotion and passions. It should be the soul of our whole life.
Thus, when we preach we cannot help but somehow showcase
the drama inside our heart, giving others a glimpse of how our heart
is actually taking, handling and delivering the word of God.
Preaching should reflect the condition of our heart as it
grapples with the living word of God. It should not just be a matter
of declaiming or orating, reduced to the art of speaking and stage
performing, a mere play of our talents.
Neither should it be just a display of our intellectual
prowess or our cultural wealth. It should manage to show the actual
living faith and love our heart has for God’s word, how our heart is
receiving it and reacting to it.
Thus, preaching is a matter of how effectively we manage
to show and teach Christ to the others. It’s never about us, the
preachers. Rather, it can be about us in our effort to bring Christ to
the others. Its success or failure depends solely on this.
St. John Mary Vianney, patron for priests, is an example
of an excellent preacher. Though not very gifted intellectually and
humanly, he managed to preach well because his heart burned with great
love for Christ.
That love led him to an amazing eloquence, full of common
and supernatural sense, that attracted all kinds of people, even the
most sophisticated and complicated ones.
We need to learn to preach from a heart immersed in Christ!
apostles and shared by all of us in different ways. The clergy take a
leading role in this affair. It’s a serious business that involves our
whole being, and not just our talents and powers.
First we need to examine our understanding and attitude
toward God’s word, especially the Gospel. On this basic understanding
would depend what we do with the Gospel and how we handle it.
Do we really know the true nature of the Gospel? Or do we
take it as just one more book, perhaps with certain importance, but
definitely not as the living word of God, in spite of its human
dimensions?
The Gospel is actually the proclamation of Christ as the
Emmanuel, that is, God with us. This is an on-going affair that did
not stop with the death of Christ. Christ lives with us up to now, and
continues to do things with us.
All these affirmations are captured in the last lines of
the Gospel of St. Matthew where our Lord said:
“Go, therefore, and teach all nations, baptizing them….
And behold I am with you all days, even to the consummation of the
world.” (28,19-20)
Our Catechism tells us that “We must continue to
accomplish in ourselves the stages of Jesus’ life and his mysteries
and often to beg him to perfect and realize them in us and in his
whole Church” (521)
Obviously, to carry out this mission, we need to know our
Lord and his teachings. We have to go to him and read the Gospel.
Reading and meditating on it should be a regular practice for us, a
habit meant to keep us in touch with him.
Thus, every time we read the Gospel, we have to understand
by our faith that we are engaging with our Lord in an actual and
living way. We are listening to him, and somehow seeing him. We can
use our imagination to make ourselves as one more character in any
scene depicted by the Gospel.
For this, we need to look for the appropriate time and
place. We have to be wary of our tendency to be dominated by a
lifestyle of activism and pragmatism that would blunt our need for
recollection and immersion in the life of Christ.
The drama of Christ’s life here on earth has to continue
in our own life. Thus, we need to continually conform our mind and
heart to the Gospel, an affair that demands everything from us.
Our problem is that the Gospel has ceased to be what it
ought to be to many people. It has been downgraded as one more book
among many others that we have. And worse, since it does not give us
immediate practical knowledge, many of us give it low priority.
For us priests, especially, we need to internalize it, not
in the way an actor internalizes his script. We internalize it by
making it the very life of our mind and heart, the very impulse of our
emotion and passions. It should be the soul of our whole life.
Thus, when we preach we cannot help but somehow showcase
the drama inside our heart, giving others a glimpse of how our heart
is actually taking, handling and delivering the word of God.
Preaching should reflect the condition of our heart as it
grapples with the living word of God. It should not just be a matter
of declaiming or orating, reduced to the art of speaking and stage
performing, a mere play of our talents.
Neither should it be just a display of our intellectual
prowess or our cultural wealth. It should manage to show the actual
living faith and love our heart has for God’s word, how our heart is
receiving it and reacting to it.
Thus, preaching is a matter of how effectively we manage
to show and teach Christ to the others. It’s never about us, the
preachers. Rather, it can be about us in our effort to bring Christ to
the others. Its success or failure depends solely on this.
St. John Mary Vianney, patron for priests, is an example
of an excellent preacher. Though not very gifted intellectually and
humanly, he managed to preach well because his heart burned with great
love for Christ.
That love led him to an amazing eloquence, full of common
and supernatural sense, that attracted all kinds of people, even the
most sophisticated and complicated ones.
We need to learn to preach from a heart immersed in Christ!
No comments:
Post a Comment