Preaching the Mystery of Faith

Quoting St. Augustine, the pope observes, “He is undoubtedly barren who preaches outwardly the word of God without hearing it inwardly.” 46 Especially for the preacher, the commitment to prayer also entails praying with and on behalf of the people to whom he preaches. The true pastor and good shepherd knows his people’s sorrows, their anxieties, their weaknesses, their capacity for love, their abiding joys, and their deepest longings. 47 Only when the homilist, in a spirit of faith and love, is conscious of his own deepest experience and those of his people can he preach persuasively to them. As one whose duty is to proclaim the word of God, the homilist must neces sarily be a person with a deep love of the Scriptures and one whose spirituality is profoundly shaped by God’s word. 48 This entails being someone who habit ually immerses himself in the language, stories, rhythms, speech patterns, and ethos of the Scriptures. The words of the Bible should be readily at hand and often on his lips; he should commit important passages of Scripture to memory and have a sure grasp of the narrative thrust of the entire Bible. His Bible should be near at hand, carrying it with him when he travels or perhaps staying linked to it by computer or other mobile technology. He may bring it with him when he prays before the Blessed Sacrament. Moreover, every preacher should regularly consult good scriptural commentaries, both of the technical and “spiritual” type. Also to be recommended are the homilies and biblical commentaries of the Church Fathers, especially those of Origen, St. Augustine, St. Ephrem, St. John Chrysostom, and St. Jerome. As noted above, a particularly effective means of immersing oneself prayerfully in the biblical texts is the ancient practice of lectio divina , a dis cipline that includes attentive and prayerful reading of the Scriptures and contemplation about their meaning for one’s life—an approach warmly rec ommended by Pope Benedict XVI in Verbum Domini . 49 The whole point of these methods and practices is that the preacher learns to see the world through biblical eyes. He should become adept at noticing the analogies between the Bible and ordinary experience so that he The Preacher as a Man of Scripture

46

Verbum Domini , no. 59.

47 See CIC, c. 529 §1. 48 See Presbyterorum Ordinis , no. 4. 49 See Verbum Domini , nos. 86-87.

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