Simon and his companions searched for Jesus and, on finding
Him, they said:
“Everyone is looking for
you.”
He told them, “Let us go on to
the nearby villages that I may preach there also. For this purpose have I
come.”
We can appreciate from that passage of the Gospel that
Jesus considered His preaching to be of supreme importance; and that most
probably led that great disciple of Jesus, St. Paul, to make this otherwise
surprising declaration in his first letter to the Corinthians:
Christ did not send me
to baptize, but to preach the gospel. (1:17)
Throughout His public ministry Jesus’ preaching was a cause
of astonishment to those who heard Him. They
reacted in this way both because of the content
of His preaching -- many, for example, would say after hearing Him:
Where
did this man get this wisdom? (Matthew 13:54),
and also, because of the manner in which He addressed
them, as you heard in last week’s Gospel passage:
The people were astonished at His
teaching, for He taught them as one having authority and not as
the scribes.
Now, this was not just the reaction of simple people
perhaps too prone to religious excitement, it was also the response of the Temple
guards – servants of the chief priests and Pharisees -- notoriously untouched
by any such religious sensitivities, as St. John tells us in his Gospel (7:46):
The officers answered,
"Never has a man spoken the way this Man speaks.”
Indeed, St. Mark tells us (11:18), that the religious
authorities themselves -- proud aristocrats and determined enemies of Jesus --
had a like appreciation of His preaching:
The chief priests and the scribes
began seeking how to destroy Jesus; they were afraid of Him, for the whole
crowd was astonished at His teaching.
When the scribes -- learned in the Law and in the Jewish
oral tradition -- addressed the people on some brief passage of the Law, they
frequently did little more than string together a few quotes, taken them from
earlier authorities or currently influential teachers, without themselves
making any personal statements or commitment.
With Jesus, however, it was quite different: He might,
indeed, quote on occasion, but only from the Scriptures; other than that, He might proffer His own observations
on everyday events and occurrences of human life, or make Personal references
to the wonder and beauty of the natural world around, before finally -- by the
fullness of the Spirit that was in Him -- delivering a teaching uniquely based
on His own Personal authority, that was both sublimely expressive of God’s
presence and purpose in the Scriptures, and yet most harmoniously in tune with nature,
and with the experiences, the religious expectations and aspirations, of ordinary men and women.
His was, indeed, an absolutely unique authority on, and
interpreter of, divine realities, as both St. John (3:11-13) and St. Matthew (11:27)
tell us:
Truly, truly, I (Jesus) say
to you, We speak of what We know and testify of what We have seen, and you do not
accept Our testimony. No one has ascended into heaven, but He Who descended
from heaven: the Son of Man.
All things have been handed over
to Me by My Father; and no one knows the Son except the Father; nor does anyone
know the Father except the Son, and anyone to whom the Son wills to reveal Him.
Now, St. Paul, by virtue of his God-given vocation as Doctor
of the Nations, recognized and appreciated the absolute necessity of this
aspect of Jesus’ teaching, as we can tell from the advice he gave to Titus (Titus
2:15), an early convert of his whom he later established as head of the church
in Crete:
Say these things. Exhort and correct with all authority. Let no
one look down on you (because of your youth).
Today, the proclamation of the Gospel by public preaching is
frequently mocked by those who foolishly and proudly ‘think they know it all’;
or by others (more important ecclesiastically?) who think they have reasons more
compelling than Our Lord’s own express example.
Nevertheless, public proclamation through authoritative Sunday preaching is absolutely essential for Mother Church, and
it should not be abandoned for fear of jibes or unpopularity! The authority so desirable in Mother Church’s
preaching can only come from enlightened faith based on her witness to authentically
Apostolic and Catholic Christian teaching: a faith which has been gratefully
received, wholeheartedly believed over thousands of years, and is now -- even
in a paganized West -- so deeply loved and revered that it has to be most reverently handed
on to subsequent generations in
the fulness of its wondrous beauty and divine truth. Such authority in priest-and- people’s
Catholic proclamation and Christian witness cannot be based on some stirred-up,
emotional novelty, justified by any ‘paternal assurance’ of personal,
compassionate, inspiration; it must come from a total commitment to what is
traditional and transcendent in Mother Church, and yet, what is essentially
part of, and indeed the only key to, our deepest human self, made in the image
and likeness of God. This total
commitment to the God proclaimed by our faith can only come about to the extent
in which we realize that our duty and glorious calling as Catholics and Christians is to know
the God of our proclamation p/Personally:
They will not hurt or destroy in
all My holy mountain, for the earth will be full of the knowledge of the LORD
as the waters cover the sea. (Isaiah 11:9)
This knowledge is not just some awareness of certain facts about
God, the Scriptures, or about the Church; it must aspire to be a deeply personal
appreciation of and love for God Himself, as manifested to us in the Person
of Jesus Christ, witnessed to us by Jesus’ revelation of the Father, and confirmed
by His Gift of the Holy Spirit in Mother Church. This is a knowledge that can only be received
by those who consistently and perseveringly seek to follow their Lord’s own
example of commitment and love as shown by His constant communing with His
Father in prayer:
Rising very early before dawn, He
left and went off to a deserted place, where He prayed.
It is the lack of such loving knowledge of, communion with,
and whole-hearted response to, the Personal God Who deigns to dwell
within His faithful servants, that bedevils the proclamation and the witness of
Catholic priests and Christians today.
In the book of Hosea (4:6; 6:6) we are told:
My people are destroyed for lack
of knowledge. Because you have rejected knowledge, I also will reject you from
being My priest.
I delight in loyalty rather than
sacrifice, and in the knowledge of God rather than burnt offerings.
The world’s ‘religion’ today is above all a proclamation of
self-sufficiency and mutual self- approbation: ‘we can do good of ourselves
without any God’. And because God is
rejected as not-necessary, there is no authority able to give peace, strength,
and coherence to the common man’s experience of life, all we have is woke doctrines
and human (especially feminine) sensibilities.
The laws that would govern the nations all too often give expression to the
lies and deceits of unconsciously ludicrous pride (as above) and corrosive
self-interest; and the laws that would govern our own society is, at the best, only
a series ‘ad hoc’ solutions quite unable to cure the root-ills of an irreligious,
no longer God-fearing, nation. For an
ever-growing number of individuals there is no rudder to guide or govern their
personal lives: only the compulsive
pressures of profit, the personal passions of pleasure, and social aspirations
for power and popularity, all leading to an experience of Job’s words:
My days are swifter than a
weaver's shuttle, and come to an end without hope.
Nevertheless, let us, People of God, take to heart the
words of the great prophets:
He will raise us up on the third
day that we may live before Him; so, let us know, let us press on to know,
the LORD. (Hosea 6:2-3)
They will not hurt or destroy in
all My holy mountain, for the earth will be full of the knowledge of the LORD
as the waters cover the sea. (Isaiah 11:9)
Above all, of course, we must learn from Our Blessed
Lord Himself (John 10:15):
As the Father knows Me, I know
the Father; and I lay down My life for the sheep.
You (Samaritans) worship
what you do not know; we worship
what we know, for salvation is from the Jews. (John 4:22)
This is eternal life, that they should know You the only true
God, and the One Whom You sent, Jesus Christ. (John 17:3)
I do know Him (God) and I keep His word. (John 8:55)
The Son of God knew His Father’s infinite goodness-and-love
for what He had originally created in His own likeness, and – loving Son that
He was -- He willed to suffer in His humanity for love of us, and to die
as Man for love of His Father, thus becoming Our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ,
Word of God, born of the Virgin.
Dear People of God, let us pray that our Blessed Lord and
Saviour may give authentic authority to both the preaching and proclamation of
Mother Church and of us, her, individual, witnessing priests and people, in our
troubled world of today.
