Preaching the Mystery of Faith

year, such as Christmas or Easter, the assembly will likely include many Cath olics who participate only occasionally in the Church’s liturgy. Although not in the context of Sunday worship, similar pastoral opportunities are present at weddings or funerals, when family members who may have strayed from the practice of their faith are present at these moments of family joy and sor row. This is obviously not the time to chide such Catholics for their absence. Rather, the homilist should use the beauty of the liturgy and the contents of the homily to open the Scriptures, to make a gracious and thoughtful connec tion to the meaning of Christian faith in the world today, and to invite back those who have lost contact with the Church. This is precisely the rationale of the call for a New Evangelization of those Catholics who, for whatever reason, have drifted away from their spiritual home. Through the prayerful celebration of the Eucharistic ritual and through the graceful and respectful proclamation of the word, all are invited to be aware of their deepest spiri tual and human longings and to immerse themselves again in the mystery of Christ present in the Eucharist, who alone is able to quench their deepest spiritual thirst. The doctrines of the Church should direct the homilist and ensure that he arrives at and preaches about what is in fact the deepest meaning of Scripture and sacrament for Christian life. For doctrines simply formulate with accu racy what the Church, prompted by the gift of the Spirit, has come to know through the Scriptures proclaimed in the believing assembly and through the sacraments that are celebrated on the foundation of these Scriptures. The most central mysteries of our faith—the Trinity, the Incarnation, and the redemption that Christ reveals in his Paschal Sacrifice—were attested in the Scriptures and are proclaimed and celebrated in the Eucharist. They were formulated with precision over time by the Church’s Magisterium to keep the communities that read the Scriptures and celebrated the Eucharist in the same communion of right understanding and right worship ( orthodoxy ) about these things, a communion that was to hold across the whole world and through the centuries. For that same reason these doctrines ought to be seamlessly intro duced and articulated still today in the course of our liturgical celebrations in

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