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?