SPIRITUALITY OF A PREACHER

One may  be fascinated every time he listens to a great preacher. He may ask: Where do they get what they preach? He may even go further and question How does this preacher sustain his ministry? What powers up to preacher? How long does it take him to prepare his homily? How does he ‘stay alive’ in his ministry? The spirituality of the Preacher can be the force behind these magnanious task carried-out by preachers. What, then, is this Spirituality of the Preacher?

Preaching can be understood as the ministry of the Word. It is an attempt to affect a person’s thinking by appealing to the heart. While teaching, on one hand, is trying to affect a person’s heart by appealing to their thinking, preaching on the other hand, is an appeal to the heart, the emotions and the soul of the person. Preaching attempts to reason with a person’s mind. It appeals to the intellect and provides a person with many angles of understanding. It does not accomplish quick changes in a person’s behaviour but it begins to allow for a solid foundation upon which behaviour is directed.

Spirituality originates from the word spirit; spirit as life in the Semitic sense. The word spirit is taken from “ruah” which originally means breath, wind; the breath that gives life, life-giving breath or life itself. It is not opposed to matter, or body, but to evil, death. It is not life within or apart from the body, but one’s deep or true being/life. It is the spirit that makes one alive. In Genesis 2:7 God breathed into man’s nostrils the breath of life and then man became a living being.  In the Filipino context we can relate this breath with hinga. From hinga we can draw other significant words such as bunting hininga, naghihingalo, malagutan ng hininga, pahingahan, mahingan, etc. These Filipino words are very much related to life.  It is in this sense that we are to understand the word spirit, as life, the life-force in a person, which fires, defines, shapes, motivates, one’s decisions, actions, aspirations in life. Spirituality as a religious reality is a person’s way of living out one’s religious or at least ethical conviction. The distinctive reality in Christianity is the person of Jesus Christ. “Christian Spirituality is therefore a participation in the mystery of Christ through the interior life of grace, actuated by faith, charity, and the other virtues.”

The Spirituality of the Preacher can be understood through the formula pronounced by an odaining bishop to a newly ordained deacons as the former gives the book of Gospels to the latter: Receive the Gospel of Christ, whose herald you now are.  Believe what you read, teach what you believe, and practice what you teach. Emphasis have to be given on the acts of receivng, believing, reading, teaching and practicing.

The preacher receives the book of Gospels. He receives the ministry. He receives them from the mother Church. The act of receiving highlights the sense of gift being given by a mother to a son.  In this context the Word of God in the life of the Church is proclaimed, received, believed, written, copied, multiplied, studied, reflected, ritualized, sacramentalized, celebrated, prayed, expounded, practiced, lived, fulfilled, witnessed, retold, handed on, given. It is through this cycle that the Word gains an ecclesial dimension.  This cycle becomes possible only as the one receiving the Word makes a space in the shelf of his heart.  

Reading involves reflection; an insightful readiing. It is a conversation; a dialogue between the lived experience of the preacher and the Christian tradition found in Sacred Scriptures, Liturgy, Rosary, Sacramental Life, Living Tradition, Lives of the Saints, Theological Heritage, Social Teachings, Religious Life, Councils, Encyclicals and Exhortations. Through this dialogue the preacher is able to generate a new truth and meaning for living.

A preacher who believes can be compared with an artist. The artist convinces us of the truth by dealing with us holistically. Artists try to make us feel the truth. Good art gets the truth inside us on a level deeper than the surface of our minds.  On this level, truth is most irresistible.  The mind may not only resist the truth but may even accept it and keep it at a personal distance (Anthony Padovano, In Faith Needs Imagination).

Teaching is trying to affect a person’s heart by appealing to their thinking. Through teaching certain truths are ingrained in a person’s understanding, enabling the person too to perform those truths.

Practicing is walking the talk. It includes remembering, calling to mind, deepening, It aims for a graceful and grace-filled execution of an act. This is achieve through repetitive virtuos acts. And the perfect place to pracctice one’s vocation as a preacher is one’s religious community. Timothy Radcliffe said: Religious communities are like ecological systems, designed to sustain strange forms of life. A rare frog will need its own ecosystem if it is flourish, and make its hazardous way from spawn to tadpole to frog. If the frog is threatened with extinction, then one must build an environment, with its food and ponds and a climate in which it can thrive.

St. Dominic de Guzman is a perfect portrait of a Preacher. Such image is projected onto the Constitutions and Ordination of the Friars preachers:  There is only one identifying sign, a type of genetic code if you will, for the members of the Order and the Dominican family; that is the preaching for the salvation of humanity (Fundamental Constitution V), the ministry of the Word, the mission of evangelization. The Fourth Lateran Council lamented, “no one is giving the bread of the Word to the faithful.” Dominic understood that herein lay the root of the problems of the Church in his time. He then decided that this would be his mission and that of his followers. Dominic conceived his foundation as a preaching project. He presented this propositum vitae to both Popes Innocent III and Honorius III for their approval. This project was presented in such a way that all of the elements of Dominican life would be inspired by the ministry of the Word and oriented in that direction.

The General Chapter, celebrated in Rome wished to remind the entire Dominican family, nuns, friars, apostolic sisters, and Dominican laity, of this identifying sign as we approach the Jubilee Year of 2016. The nuns, specifically dedicated to prayer, participate in the ministry of preaching, listening to the Word, celebrating it and proclaiming the Gospel through the example of their lives. This was the specific mission of the Order in a Church that was also in need of evangelization and in a world filled with opportunities but also with foolishness and much suffering. The importance of our mission demands that we make good use of the Word and of words.

Pope Francis in Evangelii Gaudium 27 says: I dream of a missionary option, that is, a missionary impulse capable of transforming everything, so that the Church’s customs, ways of doing things, times and schedules, language and structures can be suitably channelled for the evangelization of today’s world rather than for her self-preservation. This was a prophetic intuition because the preaching of the Good News is the beginning of the process that leads to faith, to the conversion of a life that is lived centered in the Gospel, the building up of the Christian community, the humanizing of life in the style of Jesus.

Evagrius of Pontus provides a concrete image of what a theologian suppose to be. According to him, a theologian is one who"rests his head on the chest of Christ." It speaks of the indispensable prerequisite for any fruitful study of the Bible, a relationship with the Lord in the intimacy of prayer.

 Thus, we go back to the questions: Where do preachers get what they preach? How do preachers sustain their ministry? What powers up the preacher? How long does it take to prepare their homily? ANSWER: It takes a life-style. It takes a life-time. And the formula; Receive the Gospel of Christ, whose herald you now are.  Believe what you read, teach what you believe, and practice what you teach, can serve as one’s guide to achieve such desired life-style.