First Things: Proclaiming The Good News

By John Jay Hughes
Thursday, March 12, 2009

Excerpt:
“Preaching is communication of Jesus Christ himself,” Fr. Alvin Kimel writes. In an earlier age pulpits often displayed inside, for the preacher to see, the text from John 12:21: “Sir, we would like to see Jesus.” That is the deepest desire of the people of God, even if many are unable to articulate it. To fulfill that desire, preachers must themselves “know” the Lord, not just with the head, but with the heart. Acquiring that knowledge takes place outside the worshipers’ view: in the “secret place” recommended by Jesus in the Sermon on the Mount (Matt. 6:6).

Even the casual reader of the gospels cannot fail to note the time that Jesus spent in solitary, private prayer. It was in those hours alone with his heavenly Father that Jesus developed the spiritual power which enabled him to say to rough working men, “Come, follow me” –and have them obey him on the spot. It was in prayer that Jesus became the preacher of whom Mark writes: “And they were astonished at his teaching, for he spoke to them with authority and not like the scribes” (Mark 1:22). If Jesus needed those times alone with God, we preachers are fools and guilty fools if we neglect prayer.

If preachers want to speak with an authority like his (and which of us does not?), we must spend time alone with God, waiting upon him in silence, day in and day out, week after week, month after month, year after year–even when, indeed especially when, God seems to answer only with silence. the rest