ROME — Pope Francis complained of bad preaching Sunday while urging the faithful to always carry a copy of the Bible around with them.
“Sometimes it happens that our sermons and our teachings remain generic, abstract; they do not touch the soul and the life of the people” because they lack “the power of the Spirit,” the pope said during his weekly Angelus address.
At times “one hears impeccable conferences, well-constructed speeches, but they do not move the heart and so everything remains as before,” he continued.
“Even many homilies – I say it with respect but with pain – are abstract, and instead of awakening the soul, they put it to sleep,” he stated. “When the faithful start looking at their watches – ‘when is this going to end?’ – they put the soul to sleep.”
“Preaching runs this risk: without the anointing of the Spirit, it impoverishes the Word of God, and descends to moralism and abstract concepts,” he added, because “it presents the Gospel with detachment, as if it were outside time, far from reality.”
Moreover, he continued, a sermon that does not pulsate with power “is not worthy of Jesus and does not help people’s lives.”
In 1940, the Reverend Victor Whittle had a novel way of getting the point across at his sermons. He used a six foot wide blackboard, coloured chalks to make his points and a billiard cue to point them out. (Fox Photos/Getty Images)
That is why those who preach must be “the first to experience the today of Jesus, so as to be able to communicate it in the today of others,” he said.
January 23 marked for Catholics the “Sunday of the Word of God,” and the pope took advantage to urge the faithful to always keep a Bible on hand.
The Word of God “transforms an ordinary day into the today in which God speaks to us,” he said, encouraging his hearers to “pick up the Gospel and choose each day a small passage to read and re-read.”
“Keep the Gospel in your pocket or your bag, to read it on your travels, at any moment, and read it calmly,” he suggested. “In time we will discover that these words are made especially for us, for our life.”
“They will help us to welcome each day with a better, more serene outlook, because when the Gospel enters into today’s world, it fills it with God,” he said.
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