Monday, September 18, 2017

With the gentleness and patience of Christ

THOSE are words of St. Paul who expressed the ideal way of how he
should preach. (2 Cor 10,1) He was aware that with his strong
character, he tended to preach like a bully.
  
“I beg you,” he said, “that when I come I may not have to be as bold
as I expect to be toward some people who think that we live by the
standards of this world.” He had to struggle with that personal
predicament of his. And, boy, what effort he made to tackle that
problem of his!
  
We obviously have a lot of differences—in temperament, in speaking
style, in opinions, in personal tastes, in cultures, etc. This is a
fact of life which we have to know how to live with.
  
Like Christ and with his grace, we have to learn how to adapt
ourselves to the others without getting lost in the essential by
getting entangled in the incidentals. Like St. Paul, we should try our
best to be “all things to all men” for the sake of human redemption.
That is really what matters.
  
In a seminar that I attended sometime ago, one of the speakers had a
style that I considered as that of a bully. The softest tone of his
voice sounded like a thunderbolt to me. It was strident and irritating
to the ears.
  
Worse, his discussion was more argumentative than encouraging and
constructive. And I felt that he tended to be finding fault in other
people or some events, and rather self-praising, putting himself often
as an example of something. At least to me, he gave the impression he
was know-it-all guy, and his words sounded so final that left no room
for other and even contrary opinions.
  
How uncomfortable I felt, at first. But later on, I reminded myself
that something good can still be learned from a speaker who can be
considered as bad, ill-prepared or ill-mannered. God is always behind
everything. We just have to find out what God is trying to tell us in
this kind of situation.
  
Just the same, I think it helps a lot if all of us who have to discuss
something in public, and especially us, priests, who have to preach,
would meditate often on these Pauline words that would remind us of
the ideal we ought to aim at when speaking in public.
  
We should try to give concrete expressions of how this “gentleness and
patience of Christ” can also be lived by us. We will obviously have
different ideas and interpretations of these words, but at least there
would be effort to relate our style with that of Christ.
  
Let’s remember that Christ said, “Learn from me for I am meek and
humble of heart.” (Mt 11,29) He had his moments of anger, but his
anger was righteous and constructive. Most of the time, his preaching
was characterized by clarity and simplicity.

He was always appealing to people’s faith rather than to their
emotions. But he also tried his best to attune himself to the
mentality of the people despite the tremendous mysteries that he had
to convey.
  
In the end, he bore all the weaknesses of men by dying on the cross.
That’s how far Christ’s gentleness and patience went! Are we willing
to also go the distance?


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