Category Archives: Joy of the Gospel

The Preacher as Servant of Dialogue

28 Saturday Feb 2015

Posted by in dialogue, Joy of the Gospel, Pope Francis, preaching

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christ_preachingRecently, I re-read Pope Francis’ apostolic exhortation Evangelii Gaudium and I was brought to the realization that the Holy Father is proposing, in his section on preaching, the role of “servant to dialogue” as the primary role of the preacher.

Let us renew our confidence in preaching, based on the conviction that it is God who seeks to reach out to others through the preacher, and that he displays his power through human words. (EG, 136)

In the exhortation, Pope Francis begins by calling preachers of the Word to a sacred remembering of the power of preaching.  Throughout Scripture we find God choosing to work with human beings in all of their limits to proclaim his plan and his grace.  From Moses with his stutter through the Old Testament prophets and all their tribulations to John the Baptist to the apostles in their weaknesses and misunderstandings to the great missionary Paul, even though he persecuted the Church – the Word of God is proclaimed. The Word of God needs to be proclaimed in our day also!  People need to encounter the Word of God in all its richness and all of its challenging beauty and the preacher is entrusted with this sacred task!

I find it interesting then, that after making this bold and challenging proclamation, Pope Francis moves to the almost seemingly mundane character of dialogue and conversation as the foundation of preaching.

It is worth remembering that “the liturgical proclamation of the word of God, especially in the Eucharistic assembly, is not so much a time for meditation and catechesis as a dialogue between God and his people, a dialogue in which the great deeds of salvation are proclaimed and the demands of the covenant are continually restated”.   The homily has special importance due to its Eucharistic context: it surpasses all forms of catechesis as the supreme moment in the dialogue between God and his people which lead up to sacramental communion. The homily takes up once more the dialogue which the Lord has already established with his people. The preacher must know the heart of his community, in order to realize where its desire for God is alive and ardent, as well as where that dialogue, once loving, has been thwarted and is now barren. (EG, 137)

To help explore this move toward dialogue and conversation I would like to quote in length a section out of Fr. Robert Barron’s book, The Priority of Christ: Toward a Postliberal Catholicism.

At one point in his book, Fr. Barron reflects on intersubjectivity as a component of true knowledge.

For the Christian, authentic knowledge comes not through isolation or objectification but rather through something like love.  Therefore it should not be surprising that the fullness of knowing would occur through an intersubjective process, with knowers, as it were, participating in one another as each participates in the thing to be known.  If, as the Johannine prologue implies, the ground of being is a conversation between two divine speakers, it seems only reasonable that the search for intelligibility here below takes place in the context of steady and loving conversation.  

In a lyrical and compelling section of “Truth and Method,” Hans-Georg Gadamer reminds us that a healthy conversation is something like a game.  As two players surrender to the movement and rules of the game of tennis, they are carried away beyond themselves in such a way that the game is playing them much more than they are playing it.  In a similar way, when two or more interlocutors enter into the rhythm of an intellectual exchange, respectful of its rules and of one another, they are quite often carried beyond their individual concerns and questions and taken somewhere they had not anticipated, the conversation having played them.  The fundamental requirement for this sort of shared self-transcendence is a moral one: each conversationalist has to surrender her need to dominate the play for her purposes; each must efface herself, not only before the others but, more importantly, before the transcendent goal that they all seek.  To have a conversation is humbly to accept the possibility that one’s take on things might be challenged or corrected, that the other’s perspective might be more relatively right than one’s own.  

Holding these thoughts with those of Pope Francis we can see that preaching has as its true basis and foundation the very common and universal reality of honest conversation and dialogue more so than any latest and trendy fad, philosophy or method regarding public speaking and debate.  Rather than belittling the preaching task these depth explorations of conversation and dialogue show forth the true richness of understanding afforded this important and critical task!

The homily takes up once more the dialogue which the Lord has already established with his people. The preacher of the Word, along with the people of God, is himself caught up in this ongoing conversation between the Lord and his people yet he has a truly unique and important role to play.  The preacher must allow himself to be caught up in the game and therefore overcome the constant and often subtle temptation to dominate the play for his purposes.  This is a renunciation and an asceticism that every preacher must develop in his life.  If a homily is too self-referential then it has missed the mark and probably most of the people of God have already tuned out.  To make use of the above analogy – a person cannot play a good and rousing game of tennis if he is more concerned about how he looks rather than the game!  To preach is to enter into the great game of the dialogue between our risen Lord and his people!

The proper progress of the dialogue though is dependent upon respect of the rules given.  The homilist is to be the servant to dialogue.

The dialogue is Christ’s and not the preacher’s.  If preaching is to mean anything then somehow Christ must speak through the preacher’s words to the heart of those who are gathered.  This means that the preacher must learn how to get out of the way and not try to dominate the play for his own agenda or emotional needs.  Any person acquainted with the task of preaching will know that this is not as easy to do as one might think but it is essential.

For preaching to be effective, the preacher must be in dialogue with Christ and in dialogue with the community of the Church.  The preacher must know Christ and allow himself to be known by Christ fully.   The preacher must know the heart of his community, in order to realize where its desire for God is alive and ardent, as well as where that dialogue, once loving, has been thwarted and is now barren.  In order to know his community, the preacher must be with his community.  He must have the “smell of his sheep” on him as Pope Francis has famously said.  When the community is not known there is always the danger of preaching at people rather than assisting the great dialogue that the Lord has begun.  Would it not be an extremely sad thing for a preacher to come before the gates of heaven only to there be given the realization that his preaching was more of an interruption to our Lord’s great dialogue with his people rather than an assistance?

If authentic preaching has as part of its basis knowledge of the community then homily preparation is just as much about visiting the homebound, celebrating with families, serving the poor and weeping with those who mourn as it is about studying the Scriptures and reflecting on Biblical commentaries.  The preacher who shuts himself away in a rectory or a parish office is stunting his preaching potential and doing a great disservice to his community.  Christ dwells in the midst of his people, especially the poor.  Whenever and wherever Christ is encountered deeper understanding of Sacred Scripture is gained. In order to be a servant of dialogue, the preacher must go out into his community.

A little later in his Exhortation, Pope Francis offers these words that again situate the preaching task squarely in the life of the community with some profound implications: The Lord and his people speak to one another in a thousand ways directly, without intermediaries. But in the homily they want someone to serve as an instrument and to express their feelings in such a way that afterwards, each one may choose how he or she will continue the conversation. (EG, 143) Believe it or not, preacher, it is not your gifted eloquence, flourishing rhetoric or funny jokes that unite heaven and earth! Christ and his people are already united; they are already in dialogue in a thousand ways directly. Daily (in prayer, in struggle, in joy, in temptations, in uncertainty, in gratitude, in the depth of the human heart) Christ and his people are conversing, recognized or not on our part. The preacher does not have the task of scaling the heavens in order to unite heaven and earth (and honestly I don’t believe the people are looking for this). The preacher, as servant of dialogue, does have the task of being open to being led by the Spirit to speak the words that help the people catch a glimpse of how heaven and earth are already united and interacting in their lives! (The Holy Father offers three practical resources to aid in this: appeal to imagery, cultivate simplicity in ones words and be positive.) Upon catching this glimpse, the people will then continue the conversation with the Lord in their own way. As a servant of dialogue the homilist is to listen, to seek to be an instrument and then to let go … then repeat.      

Finally, the preacher himself must both allow the dialogue to carry him as well as call forth sacrifice in his life. As two players surrender to the movement and rules of the game of tennis, they are quite often carried beyond their individual concerns and questions and taken somewhere they had not anticipated, the conversation having played them.  In humble prayer, the preacher must first encounter the Word and let the Word speak to him, once something sparks then the preacher must let the Word carry him to where it wants him to go.  We need to trust that the Word of God is indeed active and alive and we need to trust that the Word will take us to what the community needs to hear.  Within this trust, the preacher must even sacrifice of bit of self for this to happen. To illustrate this dynamic of service to dialogue here are two images given by the author Annie Dillard in her book, The Writing Life:

To find a honey tree, first catch a bee. Catch a bee when its legs are heavy with pollen; then it is ready for home … Carry the bee to a nearby open spot – best an elevated one – release it, and watch where it goes. Keep your eyes on it as long as you can see it, and hie you to that last known place. Wait there until you see another bee; catch it, release it, and watch. Bee after bee will lead toward the honey tree, until you see the final bee enter the tree. Thoreau describes this process in his journals. So a book leads its writer.

You may wonder how you start, how you catch the first one. What do you use for bait?

You have no choice. One bad winter in the Arctic, and not too long ago, an Algonquin woman and her baby were left alone after everyone else in their winter camp had starved … The woman walked from the camp where everyone had died, and found at a lake a cache. The cache contained one small fishhook. It was simple to rig a line, but she had no bait, and no hope of bait. The baby cried. She took a knife and cut a strip from her own thigh. She fished with the worm of her own flesh and caught a jackfish; she fed the child and herself. Of course she saved the fish gut for bait. She lived alone at the lake, on fish, until spring, when she walked out again and found people…

Might it be possible that the New Evangelization is calling forth a new approach to preaching? I believe that Pope Francis is sharing some profound thoughts in this regard for our consideration – the preacher as servant to dialogue.

Notes on Preaching, #3 "The Joy of the Gospel"

31 Tuesday Dec 2013

Posted by in constancy, courage, Joy of the Gospel, measured, Pope Francis, preaching

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The homily cannot be a form of enter­tainment like those presented by the media, yet it does need to give life and meaning to the celebra­tion. It is a distinctive genre, since it is preach­ing situated within the framework of a liturgical celebration; hence it should be brief and avoid taking on the semblance of a speech or a lecture. A preacher may be able to hold the attention of his listeners for a whole hour, but in this case his words become more important than the celebra­tion of faith. If the homily goes on too long, it will affect two characteristic elements of the liturgical celebration: its balance and its rhythm. When preaching takes place within the context of the liturgy, it is part of the offering made to the Father and a mediation of the grace which Christ pours out during the celebration. This context demands that preaching should guide the assembly, and the preacher, to a life-changing communion with Christ in the Eucharist. This means that the words of the preacher must be measured, so that the Lord, more than his minis­ter, will be the centre of attention.  (EG, 138)

I once heard a Benedictine monk compare good liturgy to a beautiful and precise dance.  Pope Francis is displaying this same sensibility in his reflection on preaching.  Liturgy has a specific rhythm and movement and the preached word is part of this greater whole.  If the sermon takes on too much emphasis, if it only becomes about entertaining, if the true focus of Christ’s continuing dialogue with his people is denied then the rhythm of the whole liturgy is thrown off-kilter if not entirely lost.  The balance and rhythm of the whole liturgy must be kept in mind and maintained during the crafting of a sermon.  Preaching is part of the offering made to the Father and a mediation of the grace which Christ pours out during the (entire) celebration.  (One internal way that I check to see if my homily maintained the rhythm of the liturgical celebration is if it corresponds with the music chosen for the liturgy – chosen separately by the music minister and, more often than not, not discussed or planned beforehand.)  
Pope Francis is making news for his “off-script” remarks but it has also been noted that his sermons are on the shorter side.  It seems that he practices what he preaches.  The homily is a distinctive genre, since it is preach­ing situated within the framework of a liturgical celebration; hence it should be brief and avoid taking on the semblance of a speech or a lecture.  It takes more effort to be brief, concise and measured in what one has to say.  This also requires a true knowledge of the distinctive genre that the sermon is and its scope and purpose.  Pope Francis, through his exhortation and his very own practice, is demonstrating that he knows both what a sermon is and what it is not.  The sermon is not a speech nor a lecture nor a moment to entertain.  (Maybe a worthy exercise for any preacher is to reflect on these three genres determining their purpose and method and then, by process of negation, try to then move toward and determine what is distinctive about the genre of the homily.) 
One word that comes to my mind regarding the distinctiveness of the homily, and it is a word used by the Holy Father himself, is measured.  The homily strives to be measured both within itself (in technique, in focus, in use of imagery, etc.), within the larger context of the whole liturgical celebration (again it is part of the offering made to the Father) and, I would say, in regard to the entire and ongoing dialogue between Christ and his Church (as a preacher it is essential to know that any particular sermon is a small part of something much bigger – this allows the preacher to be rooted in the true and abiding source of inspiration as well as freeing the preacher from the illusion that it is all on him, an unrealistic weight to bear).
In the section “Cross and Mission” in the book Open Mind, Faithful Heart, then Cardinal Bergoglio (now Pope Francis) reflects on the essential value of apostolic courage and constancy in regards to the mission of discipleship.  I would contend that these are two essential virtues necessary to the ability to be measured in the full act (as laid out above) of preaching.  
I want to mention now two attitudes that clearly reveal that a person has assumed the Lord’s mission on the cross.  The two attitudes are apostolic courage and constancy, and they go together.  They characterize the person who, having received the mission, seeks to have the same sentiments as the Lord who gives the mission.  The defects opposed to these attitudes are presumption and fear.  One woman devoted to the Church spoke thus: “Fearful people will never make great progress in virtue, nor will they ever accomplish anything great; those who are presumptuous will not persevere till the end.” Both attitudes, courage and constancy … go together and reinforce one another…  Cowardice means shrinking back toward perdition.  When we lack constancy and patience, the very first challenge makes us want to come down from the cross in order to fight our own battle and not the Lord’s.  Courage supposes constancy; it makes us persons who strive after an ideal.  To embrace the cross, we need courage, and, to remain on it, we need constancy.
Good preaching demands constancy and courage; it demands the lived asceticism that the homily is another instance of the continuing dialogue between Christ and his people and the awareness­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­that the desire the preacher may face to either fight any of his own battles through the sermon or avoid the full demand of the gospel is, in fact, the temptation to abandon the cross. 
A life of faith, lived in constancy and courage, produces the wisdom necessary to know how to be measured in the proclamation of Christ’s gospel. 

Notes on Preaching, #2 "The Joy of the Gospel"

08 Sunday Dec 2013

Posted by in homily, Joy of the Gospel, Pope Francis, preaching

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Let us renew our confidence in preaching, based on the conviction that it is God who seeks to reach out to others through the preacher, and that he displays his power through human words. (EG, 136)

Pope Francis calls preachers of the Word to a sacred remembering of the power of preaching.  Throughout Scripture we find, time and time again, God choosing to work with human beings in all of our limits to proclaim his plan and his grace.  From Moses through the Old Testament prophets to John the Baptist to the apostles and to the great missionary Paul – there is a need that the Word of God be proclaimed and the need continues in our day!  People need to encounter the Word of God in all its richness and challenging beauty!  
I find it interesting that Pope Francis, after making this bold and challenging proclamation, then moves to the almost seemingly mundane character of dialogue and conversation as the foundation of preaching. 
It is worth remembering that “the liturgical proclamation of the word of God, especially in the eucharistic assembly, is not so much a time for meditation and catechesis as a dialogue between God and his people, a dialogue in which the great deeds of salvation are proclaimed and the demands of the covenant are continually restated”.   The homily has special importance due to its eucharistic context: it surpasses all forms of catechesis as the supreme moment in the dialogue between God and his people which lead up to sacramental communion. The homily takes up once more the dialogue which the Lord has already established with his people. The preacher must know the heart of his community, in order to realize where its desire for God is alive and ardent, as well as where that dialogue, once loving, has been thwarted and is now barren. (EG, 137)
To help unpack this move toward dialogue and conversation I would like to quote in length a section out of Fr. Robert Barron’s book, The Priority of Christ: Toward a Postliberal Catholicism.  
At one point in his book, Fr. Barron is exploring intersubjectivity as a component of true knowledge. 
For the Christian, authentic knowledge comes not through isolation or objectification but rather through something like love.  Therefore it should not be surprising that the fullness of knowing would occur through an intersubjective process, with knowers, as it were, participating in one another as each participates in the thing to be known.  If, as the Johannine prologue implies, the ground of being is a conversation between two divine speakers, it seems only reasonable that the search for intelligibility here below takes place in the context of steady and loving conversation.  
In a lyrical and compelling section of “Truth and Method,” Hans-Georg Gadamer reminds us that a healthy conversation is something like a game.  As two players surrender to the movement and rules of the game of tennis, they are carried away beyond themselves in such a way that the game is playing them much more than they are playing it.  In a similar way, when two or more interlocutors enter into the rhythm of an intellectual exchange, respectful of its rules and of one another, they are quite often carried beyond their individual concerns and questions and taken somewhere they had not anticipated, the conversation having played them.  The fundamental requirement for this sort of shared self-transcendence is a moral one: each conversationalist has to surrender her need to dominate the play for her purposes; each must efface herself, not only before the others but, more importantly, before the transcendent goal that they all seek.  To have a conversation is humbly to accept the possibility that one’s take on things might be challenged or corrected, that the other’s perspective might be more relatively right than one’s own.  
Holding these thoughts with those of Pope Francis we can see that preaching has as its true basis the very common and universal reality of honest conversation and dialogue rather than the latest and currently trendy fad, philosophy or method.  Rather than belittling the preaching task these depth explorations of conversation and dialogue show forth the true richness of understanding afforded this important and critical task!
The homily takes up once more the dialogue which the Lord has already established with his people. The preacher of the Word, along with the people of God, is himself caught up in this ongoing conversation between the Lord and his people yet he has a truly unique and important role to play.  The preacher must allow himself to be caught up in the game and must constantly fight against the temptation to dominate the play for his purposes.  This is a renunciation and an asceticism that every preacher must develop in his life.  If a homily is too self-referential then it has missed the mark and probably most of the people of God have already tuned out.  To make use of the above analogy – a person cannot play a good and rousing game of tennis if he is more concerned about how he looks rather than the game!  To preach is to enter into the great game of the dialogue between our risen Lord and his people! 
The proper progress of the dialogue though is dependent upon respect of the rules given.  Here are a few that I find present and have sparked for me in the thoughts quoted above.  
Fundamentally, the dialogue is Christ’s and not my own.  If my preaching is to mean anything then somehow Christ must speak through my words to the heart of those who are gathered.  This means that I must learn how to get out of the way and not try to dominate the play for my own agenda or emotional needs.  My experience has taught me that this is not as easy to do as one might think but it is essential.
For my preaching to be effective I must be in dialogue with Christ myself and I must be in dialogue with the community of the Church.  The preacher must know Christ and allow himself to be known by Christ fully.   The preacher must know the heart of his community, in order to realize where its desire for God is alive and ardent, as well as where that dialogue, once loving, has been thwarted and is now barren.  In order to know his community, the preacher must be with his community.  He must have the “smell of his sheep” on him as Pope Francis has famously said.  When the community is not known there is always the danger of preaching at people rather than continuing the great dialogue that the Lord has begun.  Would it not be an extremely sad thing for a preacher to come before the gates of heaven only to there be brought to the realization that his preaching was more of an interruption and distraction to our Lord’s great dialogue with his people rather than an assistance?
If authentic preaching has as part of its basis knowledge of the community then homily preparation is just as much about visiting the homebound, celebrating with families, serving the poor and weeping with those who mourn as it is about studying the Scriptures and reflecting on Biblical commentaries.  The preacher who shuts himself away in a rectory or a parish office is stunting his preaching potential and doing a great disservice to his community.  Christ dwells in the midst of his people, especially the poor.  Whenever and wherever Christ is encountered deeper understanding of Sacred Scripture is gained.     
The homily is the ultimate moment of catechesis but it is not just catechesis.  Scriptural studies and commentaries can provide good and worthy insights for preaching but preaching should not just become a lecture on Scripture or the faith.  There are appropriate moments for that (i.e. Bible Studies or Faith formation) but it is not the homily.  The homily is not meant to give facts about Jesus or his time or a period in Israel’s history; the homily is meant to help people encounter Christ, right now in their lives!    
Another rule – the preacher must learn how to allow the dialogue to carry him!  As two players surrender to the movement and rules of the game of tennis, they are quite often carried beyond their individual concerns and questions and taken somewhere they had not anticipated, the conversation having played them.  In humble prayer, the preacher must first encounter the Word and let the Word speak to him, once something sparks then the preacher must let the Word carry him to where it wants him to go.  Again, this gets into not trying to dominate the conversation.  We need to trust that the Word of God is indeed active and alive and we need to trust that the Word will take us to what the community needs to hear.  I believe that it is the author Annie Dillard who once reflected that if you want to learn where a bee hive is (and hence find the honey) then you must first learn how to follow bees.  The preacher must learn how to be guided by what sparks for him from God’s holy Word.  The preacher must learn how to follow bees.
Some thoughts for consideration as this ongoing reflection on the importance of preaching to the great task of evangelization continues…                        

Notes on Preaching, #1 "The Joy of the Gospel"

30 Saturday Nov 2013

Posted by in ever newness of Christ, Joy of the Gospel, memory, New Evangelization, Pope Francis, preaching, sermon

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I have been told that I am a good preacher.  I am appreciative of this and take it both as a compliment and a responsibility to continually strive for but I have to admit that I sometimes wonder if people heard the same homily that I did when I preached at a Mass!  Fr. Mike Creson, a friend and priest in my diocese, once joked about given the same Sunday homily at a multitude of Masses (which can often be the case in my diocese), “The first time preached the homily is new and you stumble a little.  The second time you are more comfortable and it comes better.  The third time is good and you got it down although it is getting a little wearisome.  By the time of the fourth Mass, well … you wonder if even you believe it!” 

There are many factors that can affect the “effectiveness” of preaching (however one chooses to define that).  A number of which are out of the preacher’s control – factors going on in a parishioner’s life and in the life of a community, the attitude a person brings to church, the crying of a baby in a congregation and other distractions that can occur during Mass, duties and emergencies that can come up that limit homily preparation time and even just the temperature setting in a Church.  The list can go on and on.  All this being said though, the bishop, priest and deacon have a solemn duty to proclaim God’s Word faithfully to God’s people.  This is truly an important task and one every minister of the Word should give the utmost care and attention to; not least of all because we promised to do so at our ordinations!  
In his first Apostolic Exhortation, “The Joy of the Gospel” Pope Francis spends a good bit of time reflecting on the value and importance of preaching in the overall mission of the Church with its mandate to evangelize.  Using our Holy Father’s exhortation as a touchstone and guide, I would like to offer some thoughts on preaching.  I do not know how many posts I will devote to this topic nor do I claim that every post here on out will focus exclusively on preaching without interruption until completed but I want to spend some time reflecting on this invitation of our Holy Father because, I believe, preaching is truly important in the Christian life and frankly, when preaching is minimized, community suffers.  
I know not every bishop, priest or deacon will be a Bishop Fulton Sheen or a St. John Chrysostom and I believe that Pope Francis is aware of this also.  But, when ministers of the Word continually strive to be faithful and authentic to the call to preach the Good News (whether we be the most dynamic speaker or not) something important happens in people’s lives because it is not only us at work, the Spirit of God moves through us – often very poor vessels that we are.  We need to trust in this and truly recognize that just a God works through us in the sacraments of baptism, matrimony, reconciliation and Eucharist so also is God working through us in our sharing and breaking open of His word which is an essential part of every celebration of the Eucharist.
It is worthy to note where Pope Francis grounds his understanding of preaching as expressed in the the first chapters of “The Joy of the Gospel” – the ever-newness of Christ (chp. 11) and memory (chp. 13).
Christ is the “eternal Gospel” (Rev 14:6); he “is the same yesterday and today and forever” (Heb 13:8), yet his riches and beauty are inexhaustible. He is for ever young and a constant source of newness. The Church never fails to be amazed at “the depth of the riches and wisdom and knowledge of God” (Rom 11:33). 
Later in his Exhortation the Holy Father will reflect on every sermon as a continuation of the original dialogue begun by Christ with his disciples.  (The homily takes up once more the dialogue which the Lord has already established with his people. #137)  This is a wonderful understanding of the sermon and one I will reflect on in more detail in a later post but for our purposes here it is good to remind ourselves that we and our preaching are part of something much bigger.  Our preaching is not something separate from, nor just an add-on to the coming of the Kingdom of God; our preaching is part and parcel of this ongoing and ever new dialogue between Christ and his disciples!  For preaching to be truly effective and efficacious then the preacher himself must be ever immersed in an ongoing encounter and dialogue with Christ in his own heart.  The efficacious sermon will “tap into” this ever new and ongoing dialogue between Christ and his disciples. 
… as Saint Irenaeus writes: “By his coming, Christ brought with him all newness”.   With this newness he is always able to renew our lives and our com­munities, and even if the Christian message has known periods of darkness and ecclesial weak­ness, it will never grow old. Jesus can also break through the dull categories with which we would enclose him and he constantly amazes us by his divine creativity. Whenever we make the effort to return to the source and to recover the original freshness of the Gospel, new avenues arise, new paths of creativity open up, with different forms of expression, more eloquent signs and words with new meaning for today’s world. Every form of authentic evangelization is always “new”.
Yet the Holy Father goes on to caution that the “ever newness” of the Gospel does not negate memory rather, in the Gospel, memory is fulfilled and memory itself becomes a means of encountering the newness of Christ.  The apostles never forgot the moment when Jesus touched their hearts: “It was about four o’clock in the afternoon” (Jn 1:39).  A primary duty of the preacher is to call the community back to memory not in a sense of a mistaken nostalgia (“Things were so much better way back when…”) but in the depth of a sacramental sense.  When we remember, individually and communally, how Jesus has touched our hearts then we encounter Christ anew!  The preacher must preserve this deep sense of memory!  We live in a world that thrives on distraction and a glut of superficial information.  People are yearning for a depth to memory.  A sermon that just skims the surface of the superficial does no one any good! 
The believer is essentially “one who remembers”.    
Every sermon should call people back to this sense of memory and therefore to a new encounter with Christ.  People are starving for this!  They are not starving for the priest’s latest travelogue or the newest internet joke – that is the superficial they are fed every day of the week.  The Church truly nourishes and she does so through Word and Sacrament!  My spiritual director in seminary, Fr. Lou Cameli, once gave me a treasured piece of advice about preaching: “Just say something that invites people to prayer.”  It is about memory and the ever new encounter with Christ. 
Every Monday, I begin to pray over the readings for the upcoming Sunday and part of my prayer is a simple request to the Lord, “Jesus, let me know what you would have me say to your people.”