Preaching the Mystery of Faith

language can give an entirely new texture to his words and ideas, enabling him to express the mystery of the Gospel in a compelling manner. At the same time, cultural complexity poses a sharp challenge to the preacher in the effort to communicate the faith to people, because he may not share their education, background, and assumptions. Pastoral ministry, and especially the ministry of preaching, challenges the ordained minister to have a deep respect for other cultures and, to the extent possible, to enter into another culture with humility, attention, and deep love. He should strive, above all, to learn the language of the people he serves and, as best he can, to appreciate their manner of thinking, feeling, and acting. Only then can he preach heart to heart. Also, he ought never to forget that, despite enormous differences among us at the level of language, practice, history, lifestyle, and social class, we remain, in spiritual essentials, one. Everyone wants joy in life, but at times sadness strikes; everyone is finite and yet has expansive hopes and longings; everyone seeks friendship but also experiences times of loneli ness and isolation; everyone sins; everyone is a subject worthy of respect; and everyone is called by God. The liturgical assembly is challenged also. It must make the extra effort to listen attentively to homilists for whom English is not their first language. Listeners of the homily ought to welcome the wisdom offered by these preachers. The homilist speaking to a culture not his own can find encouragement in the Christian communion in which he and his people share, a unity meant to be celebrated in the Eucharist itself. Although the Catholic population in the United States is blessed with many different cultures, the Hispanic/Latino segment of the Catholic com munity is growing at a particularly rapid rate and poses substantial opportuni ties and challenges for effective preaching in this context. 58 Many Hispanic Catholics are especially attuned to the symbolic and sacramental world of Catholicism. Successful preachers who may come from a different cultural context would do well to immerse themselves in Hispanic popular piety, a world in which Mary and the saints are venerated with intense fervor and affection and in which there is profound devotion to the Virgin Mary and the suffering Christ. Popular religiosity should not be looked down upon,

58 See Encuentro and Mission: A Renewed Pastoral Framework for Hispanic Ministry (USCCB, 2002) concerning the particular urgency needed for the Church in the United States to respond prop erly to the growing Hispanic/Latino Catholic population.

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