Spiritual life and preaching

WE have to remind ourselves that the effectiveness of a

priest’s preaching depends mainly on the state of his spiritual life.

More than his intellectual caliber and his speaking and entertaining

skills and all other human charms he possesses, it’s in the health of

his spiritual life where the people can truly hear the word of Christ.

            Let’s remember that Christ said to his disciples, “Whoever

listens to you listens to me.” (Lk 10,16) These words clearly presume

that the priest should be vitally identified with Christ so that his

preaching would actually be the preaching of Christ, and not just his

alone.

            While all his human powers and talents have to be used for

preaching, one has to see to it that that these powers and talents get

truly inspired by the spirit of Christ. In short, the priest has to

assume the very mind and heart of Christ when he preaches. Otherwise,

he will just be preaching himself to the people. And that would be a

very funny and anomalous situation.

            All the legitimate concerns for him to be effective in his

preaching, like he has  to be identified with the people, to be

innovative in order to flow with the times, etc., should come as a

consequence of his indispensable identification with the living Christ

to whom he is sacramentally conformed.

            Let’s remember that Christ is the perfect and lone

mediator between God and men. The priest can only be a good mediating

preacher to the extent that he becomes another Christ.

            The priest should always remember the radical identity

that he has. He is no one other than Christ, head of the Church. Even

when he is playing sports and doing an excursion, this awareness of

this identity should never be lost.

            Imagine if he is truly another Christ, if he has the very

mind and heart of Christ. He would never run out of things to say, he

would know how to read minds and the signs of the times, he would be

full of goodness and mercy, etc.!

            For this, he should always be praying, or at least,

conscious that he is in the presence of God. Everything in his life,

no matter how small and insignificant it is in human terms, should be

a material for his abiding dialogue with God.

            How important therefore it is to do everything just to be

another Christ not only in name and title, but most especially in

vivo! He should avoid simply being some kind of bureaucrat, an

official in the Church, a scholar, an expert in something. He has to

be another Christ, nothing short of that!

            When one strives to be another Christ, even his

limitations and mistakes can be very useful. And the opposite is also

true. When one is not truly another Christ, even the best qualities

and talents he has can be a danger to him and to everybody else. Let’s

remember what St Paul said in this regard.

            “Brothers,” he said, “consider the time of your calling.

Not many of you were wise by human standards. Not many were powerful.

Not many were of noble birth. But God chose the foolish things of the

world to shame the wise. God chose the weak things of the world to

shame the strong. He chose the lowly and despised things of the world,

and the things that are not, to nullify the things that are.” (1 Cor

1,26-28)

            The path to be another Christ is that of humility that in

turn will always nourish our faith, hope and charity, or in short, our

spiritual life. We need to travel this path for one to be a good and

effective preacher.

How our patience should be

WE cannot deny that whether we like it or not, we need to

have patience, lots of it, in our life. Otherwise, we cannot survive

beyond our young age. There are just so many difficulties, problems,

issues and all sorts of predicaments that would demand from us nothing

less than patience--heroic, holy patience, in fact.

            But we have to make sure that our patience is not simply a

matter of some practical advantage or purpose, with some ulterior

motives. It should have a deeper source, a greater motive and a higher

objective. It would be a pity if those occasions where patience is

needed would miss the chance to base and orient our patience properly.

            And this can only mean that we pattern our patience after

the patience of Christ who bore all our sins by going through his

passion and death on the cross, all of this out of pure obedience to

his Father and pure love for us.

            In short, we have to have the mind and attitude of Christ

when developing and practicing patience. It’s only then that our

patience would acquire its true value and would play along the

providence of God.

            This can only be done when we have Christ vitally with us.

We should continually ask for his grace for this purpose. In fact, the

first thing we should do when we need to be patient is to ask for

God’s grace.

            And with God’s grace, let us develop the pertinent

attitudes, skills and virtues. Foremost among these would be a strong

trust in God’s providence that is accompanied by our all-out effort to

handle our challenges. We have to learn to always defer to God’s will

and ways even if they may appear to be against our reasoning and

calculations.

            We have to stretch our capacity to suffer, and even to

suffer with a smile. After all when we suffer with Christ, everything

will already be taken care of, irrespective of how things end.

          In this regard, we can always take advantage of our daily

events, already full of contradictions, to broaden and deepen our

capacity to suffer out of love, which is what patience is all about.

            We should practice restraint and moderation in our

thoughts and reactions. Since our spontaneous reactions cannot be

controlled, let’s see to it that we can manage to correct ourselves or

at least put ourselves in some cautious mode as soon as we can.

            We should always be careful with our emotions, moods and

passions. The same with the social trends and fashions that can

trigger a mob response to situations, instead of a more human and

charitable one.

            Our words should be well thought out before they are

uttered. More importantly, we should always arm ourselves with good

intentions, the skill to discern whatever good there may be in any

situation even if it is dominated by so much evil. This will make

patience easy and even enjoyable.

            We should avoid being dragged by negative thoughts

whenever we encounter difficulties. We should be quick to react in a

spiritual and supernatural way, always hopeful and optimistic even,

deeply convinced that with Christ, everything will always work out for

the good. Christ knows how to derive good from evil, how to resurrect

from the dead, etc.

            Our patience should always be marked by peace and

serenity. While the physical signs of pain and suffering cannot be

avoided, we should try our best, if we have true patience, that we

refrain from falling into self-pity and subjective misery. True

patience can only be lived with joy. A joyless patience is not true

patience.

Imitate the Good Shepherd

IF we truly want to be good Christians, we need to imitate

Christ as the Good Shepherd. That is to say, that we have to learn to

complicate our life to look for those who are lost. We just cannot be

contented with taking care of those who are already somehow safe in

the flock which, definitely, is already a complicated matter.

            We have to complicate our life some more, willing to leave

behind our comfort and convenience readily. Christ, in describing

himself as the Good Shepherd, said that he was willing to lay down his

life for his sheep. (cfr Jn 10,11-18) The immediate context of those

words was in order to protect his sheep. But we can readily say also

that his willingness to die for his sheep was meant also to look for

the lost one.

            We need to process this requirement of a good Christian as

a good shepherd very slowly, and start to develop the proper attitude,

skills and virtues to fulfil it. Definitely, we need to be strongly

identified with Christ, first of all, and then go through the details

of how to meet this requirement.

            Do we know what is to be lost, especially in the context

of today? It’s easy to identify those who openly consider themselves

as atheists, agnostics, heretics, etc., as lost. But there are those

who may appear to be very pious, very saintly but actually are also

lost, even to a greater degree, because of their most deceptive

inconsistency in their Christian life.

            And there are those who are deeply trapped in some kind of

addiction, whether it be in drugs, alcohol, sex, the internet, games,

gambling, etc. These cases will require a lot of creative and patient

interventions. Would we be willing to tackle this challenge?

            To be a good shepherd would require that we should always

be observing people and following or, even better, be promptly in the

know with regard to events, trends, fashions, signs of the times.

            We should sharpen our skills of discerning and assessing

the moral quality of a person’s actuations or status, and of the

different situations in life. We need to be ready with the appropriate

criteria with which to judge these things. So you can just imagine the

amount of prayer and study needed to attain this ideal.

            If we truly care for people, we should arrive at that

point where we get to know their strengths and weaknesses. Somehow we

would be able to monitor the developments of their lives. We have to

understand then that to be immersed in God is to be immersed also in

the lives of people. We cannot live in a cocoon. As Pope Francis

always reminds us, we need to reach out to the peripheries.

            For sure, to be a good shepherd, we should be willing to

get dirty, to be truly patient and hopeful in spite of the

difficulties and the likely setbacks we will experience along the way.

            And what makes things more exciting is that while we

should be ready to look for the lost, we should also see to it that we

don’t lose those who are already safe in the flock. So this means that

we have to have the right priorities in organizing our day.

            We cannot sacrifice our prayer life, our family life, our

professional life, just to search for the lost. Or better said, we

just have to know how to put all these competing goals together.

            I suppose this is the reason why to be truly Christian, to

be truly a saint, one would really need to be heroic, making

extraordinary sacrifices when the need arises. It cannot be any other

way. We need to know how to undertake great sacrifices.