WHY DO I THINK THIS IS OUTRAGEOUSLY FUNNY?

 I just can't quit laughing when I look at this cartoon! 

THE BRICK WALL OF A SETTLED POINT OF VIEW

The whole audience in the synagogue was filled with

indignation. They rose up and expelled Jesus from the

town, leading him to the brow of the hill, intending

to hurl him over the edge.

Luke 4:24-30

 

Talking about a homily gone bad! As a preacher, this story puts the fear of God into me every time I read it. The moral of this story might be: preaching can be hazardous to your health!   

 

What we have here is the last half of a longer story. To get the full impact you need to know what goes before.  Jesus is home in the Nazareth synagogue. It is the Sabbath. He is asked to read a passage from Isaiah and give the homily.   

 

Things go well at first. He had their undivided attention. They seem to be expecting something out of the ordinary. It says “their eyes were fixed on him.”  Things were going very well - at least as long as he said things they wanted to hear, at least as long as he said things they agreed with. “All present” it says, “spoke favorably of him; they marveled at the discourse which came from his lips.”  

 

Here is where it starts turning ugly. Jesus starts saying things they didn’t want to hear, things they didn’t agree with. He begins to challenge their religious boundaries by giving two examples of God’s generous love for Gentiles. For his audience, this was heresy, pure and simple. “What do you mean by saying God loves Gentile scum? We are God’s chosen people and we have been taught all our lives that his love is restricted to us! Gentiles are destined for the fires of hell! We all know that and so should you!” 

  

At this point in Jesus’ homily, the whole audience, were are told, was filled with indignation. His own home town synagogue rose up, dragged him out of the pulpit, ran him out of town and even tried to throw him over a cliff. Now, that is a homilist worst nightmare!   

 

This message and this indignation would be repeated throughout Jesus’ ministry. The people of Nazareth, and the people who thought like them, were the all-day vineyard workers who resented the full day’s pay that the vineyard owner gave to those who arrived right before quitting time. They were the older son, who resented the fathers fawning over his prodigal brother. They were the self-righteous who condemned Jesus to death for being so generous with God’s love. “This man welcomes sinners and even eats with them.” This last crowd didn’t just drag him out of a pulpit and try to throw him over a cliff, they flogged and crucified him for his “outrageous liberal theology.”  

 

This text is very personal to me.  As pastor of our cathedral, I specialized in reaching out to marginalized and disaffected Catholics. Like Jesus, I had the honor of being accused of “welcoming sinners and eating with them.” Because of that, I was often the target of a small group of right-wing Catholics. I had a knife pulled on me over a homily that welcomed fallen away Catholics back to the church and I was featured prominently in their hate-filled and anonymous white paper that circulated around the city of Louisville.  I was loved by many and hated by some.

 

The gospel is powerful stuff and serious business. Preaching the gospel can bring you great blessings or get you killed. As Father Polycarp Sherwood, one of my St. Meinrad professors, used to tell us: “The gospel is a two-edged sword. It settles the unsettled and unsettles the settled.” In other words, he wanted to remind us that those whose lives are a mess, those who are on the margins of the church, those with nothing more to lose will find comfort in the words of the gospel. On the other hand, he wanted to remind us that those who have the world and the church by the tail, those who have a lot to lose, will be threatened by it. If they love the message of the gospel, they will love the messenger. If they are threatened by the gospel message, they will attack, or even try to kill, the messenger. On many Sundays as a pastor, I was met at the door by two basic groups: those who would marvel at the words that came from my lips and those who wanted to rip my lips off!  Besides Jesus, remember Jeremiah suffered the same rejection! They threw him into an empty, muddy cistern and left him there to die! 

 

Preaching can be hazardous to your health, but in the end, you can believe this: those who tell you what you want to hear are not necessarily your friends and those who tell you what you don’t want to hear are not necessarily your enemies. Sometimes medicine soothes and sometimes it stings. 

 

As a preacher, I have always tried to remember that if I get rejected, I hope I get rejected for preaching the gospel, not just get rejected for my own ignorance, stupidity and foolhardiness.  

       

 

WHEN YOU'RE OLD, YOU CAN GET AWAY WITH SOME CRAZY STUFF

 

Here are a few of my old and new favorites! They still make me laugh! 

PEAK EXPERIENCES

 

Jesus took Peter, James and John his brother, and led them up a high 

mountain by themselves. 

                                                 Matthew 17:1-9 

  

After being invited the first week of Lent to “go to the desert” for new insights into ourselves, we are invited the second week of Lent to “go to the mountain” for a new perspective!   

On this second Sunday of Lent, Jesus invites us to go to the mountaintop, a traditional place for achieving a new perspective on life - where we have been, where we are and where we are headed! From a mountaintop you can see in all directions. Jesus invites us to go to the mountaintop with him because conversion of life, the real purpose of Lent, is impossible without a change of perspective, without a new way of looking at reality.  

 

It is easy to “get stuck” in the way we think. As Brooks Atkinson put it, “The most fatal illusion is the settled point of view.”  Some of us go through life living out the old joke, “Don’t confuse me with the facts, my mind is made up!” Even scientists have trouble incorporating new information. The French Academy announced at one point that it would not accept any further reports of meteorites, since it was clearly impossible for rocks to fall out of the sky. Shortly after their declaration, a rain of meteorites came close to breaking all the windows of the Academy. Lent is a time to take a long, loving look at reality behind our convenient illusions!  

 

Dr. Wayne Dyer teaches us that, “When you change the way you look at things, the things you look at change.” This is certainly true in resolving soul-eating anger and resentment toward other people. What many people fail to realize is that there is a “way out” when offending people refuse to apologize and own the hurt they have caused. What they fail to realize is that the hurt can be healed and the problem resolved with a new way of looking at the perpetrator. Lent is a time to change the way we look at others, especially those who cause us distress and pain.   

 

John Lubbock reminds us that “What we see depends mainly on what we look for!” Oscar Wilde put it humorously when he said, “The optimist sees the donut; the pessimist sees the hole.” The more attention you shine on a particular subject, the more evidence of it will grow. Shine attention on obstacles or possibilities and they will multiply lavishly. Lent is a time to change the way we look at the world and change our perspective on ourselves and the people around us.     

 

Possibly the most important change we need to make this Lent in our perspective is the way we view ourselves.  No one has said it better than Marianne Williamson. “Our deepest fear is not that we are inadequate; our deepest fear is that we are powerful beyond measure. It is our light, not our darkness, that most frightens us. We were born to make manifest the glory of God within us. It is not just in some of us; it is in everyone, and as we let our own light shine, we unconsciously give other people permission to do the same.” Lent is a time to get a new perspective on ourselves and others. Lent is a time to see ourselves and others through God’s loving eyes!      

 

Because of today's “transfiguration” gospel, they are called “peak experiences” – those intense religious experiences that many of us have been lucky enough to have had at least once in our lives. In fact, I believe that this is the main thing that keeps people in organized religion - at least one “peak experience.” On the other hand, it is also the main reason some people claim to be agnostic - the absence of even one good “peak experience.”    

 

“Peak experiences” cannot be staged or created. They are simply moments of grace – spontaneous gifts from God. We can go to places where “peak experiences” have happened to other people, even places where we have personally experienced them before, but that does not mean we will have another one. They are simply unpredictable and unannounced gifts from God.   

 

“Peak experiences” can happen at some of the most surprising times and in some of the most unlikely places. Oddly enough, for example, during the clergy sexual abuse storm that came to light in 2002 a significant number of journalists, who had been assigned to report on the crisis in various locales, ended up converting to Catholicism.  They had a “religious experience,” a “peak experience” even in the midst of that pain and sin!  Others have had these “peak experiences” during the death process of a loved one or even their own process of dying. I witnessed my mother going through one of these “peak experiences” as she was dying of cancer back in 1976. I had a dramatic life-changing one in a very vivid dream about God back in 1976, when I was working in the "home missions" of southern Kentucky. It changed my life overnight! 

 

“Peak experiences” happen most often during retreats and other religious events. For instance, many seminarians I have known were so moved by meeting Pope John Paul II that they came back to the Church, after having been gone since childhood, and even decided that they may have a call to the priesthood. Many teenagers have their first “peak experience” during their senior retreat or an alternative spring break in places like Guatemala. Many married couples have had life changing “peak experiences” during Marriage Encounter weekends. Other Catholics have discovered a new burst of faith during a Cursillo weekend, a trip to Medjugore, the Holy Land or Lourdes, even meeting someone with the stature of Mother Teresa. Several hundred people, the news reports told us recently, had a "peak experience" down in little Wilmore, Kentucky, at a seminary student chapel.  

 

How they happen, why they happen and when they happen cannot be predicted, staged or even understood. They all seem to be glimpses into another level of existence or little previews of coming wonderful events that God gives some people who need a reason to hang on! Those of us who have experienced them know how mind-blowing and life changing they can be! To those who cannot say they have ever had such an experience, I would say “it ain’t over till it’s over” and “your time may be right around the corner” at some unexpected and unpredictable time.  

 

These “peak experiences” have several things in common. You have to be open to them. The “transfiguration” that we read about today, happened during one of hundreds of little retreats that Jesus arranged for his disciples! Regular contact with God through prayer does not guarantee one of these experiences, but makes them more likely to happen. Your mind must to be open and you must remain in such a receiving frame of mind. 

 

There is always a temptation to want to freeze such powerful experiences, repeat the experiences and make the experiences permanent. This is what Peter was up to in the reading today. “Lord, it is so wonderful to be here. Why don’t we erect some tents and just stay up here forever?” Jesus tells Peter that the experience was only meant to be something to sustain the group during the painful days ahead. He tells Peter that they will have to go back down the mountain and back into real life for a while. Experiencing it “all the time” would have to wait until the resurrection after his death. One of the things that Cursillo, Marriage Encounter, Medjugore, senior retreat, Lourdes and other similar experiences have in common is the desire that many have to repeat those experiences or try to be into them "full time." They are never meant to be permanent. They are only glimpses of glory. God wants us to go back to our ordinary lives, with that precious moment in the back of our minds to sustain us.               

 

Lastly, “peak experiences” are meant to help us “see connections” to see the connection between where we came from, where we are now and where we are destined. This is what the conversation that Jesus had with the saints,  Moses and Elijah, was all about. This conversation helped Jesus realize that he was the one they saw coming in the future so many years before. They helped Jesus understand where God was taking him in the days ahead – glory on the other side of suffering and death. Just so, our “peak experiences” remind us that there is something wonderful in the invisible world that awaits us on the other side of this life.  

 

May God give you your own “peak experience!” May God give you one of those “glimpses of glory!”  May you get a “sneak preview” of the world to come! May that “peak experience” sustain you in the sometimes tediousness of worldly existence and help you keep your eye on the prize! 

 

With all the problems going on in the Church today, others ask me and I ask myself over and over again “Why stay?” The reason I stay is that I have been blessed to have had a few “peak experiences” and “glimpses of glory” in my life time. It is these intense experiences that sustain me during the ordinary moments, periods of spiritual dryness and intense discouragement. As I think about all the scandal that has beset the Church, I am not worried or overcome with discouragement. To paraphrase Dr. Martin Luther King, who built his famous speech around this gospel, “I don’t know what will happen now. We’ve got some difficult days ahead, but it doesn’t matter with me now because I have been to the mountaintop. God has allowed me to go up to the mountain and I’ve looked over and I have seen the promised land. Mine eyes have seen the glory of the coming of the Lord!” 

 

My friends, I am here to stay, I remain hopeful and I am committed to being faithful to the end, not because I am out of touch with the serious problems facing our world, but because God has given me a couple of small glimpses of glory, like he did the disciples in today’s gospel. I hold on because of those “peak experiences.”      

   

 

FATHERS! THE TRUTH WILL SET US FREE!

 

 

WANT A REVITALIZED PARISH? START WITH THE PULPIT!

“The Role of Preaching in the Revitalization of a Congregation” 

Rev. J. Ronald Knott 

 

GIVEN AT LOUISVILLE PRESBYTERIAN SEMINARY

 NATIONAL FESTIVAL OF YOUNG PREACHERS 

Louisville, Kentucky 

October 31, 2015 

 

 

 

Before I get into my topic, I would like to say that I have always had a passion for preaching. That might sound like an oxymoron coming from the mouth of a 72 year old Catholic priest who has been preaching for 47 years (46 years for Catholic churches and 1 year as a campground minister for the United Church of Christ) and is very aware of the stereotype that Catholics do not value preaching. It might shock you to know that I have about 90% of all the homilies I have given over the last 45 years in hard copy and computer files. Several hundred of them are on tape.  

 

My passion goes back to a funeral for a distant relative at the Stephensport Baptist Church, Stephensport, Kentucky, when I was seven years old. In those days, Catholics were taught that if you had to attend a Protestant service like a funeral or wedding, you were not to participate. At seven years old, I remember sitting there listening to the excited and dynamic preacher and lively gospel music saying to myself, “I know I am not supposed to like this, but I do!” I remember it clearly.  

 

In Catholic seminaries, like Saint Meinrad Seminary, of the 1960s, we were not allowed to preach until we were ordained deacons during our very last year. I, however, wanted to learn how to preach. During the summer of 1968, one year before I was ordained a deacon and two years before I was ordained a priest, I signed up to be a campground minister in a United Church of Christ program called “A Christian Ministry in the National Parks” for seminary students from various Protestant seminaries. I was the very first Catholic to sign up for that program. I was trained at St. Richard Episcopal Church in Chicago and was assigned to Crater Lake National Park. I was the preacher and I was assisted by a Disciples of Christ female seminarian who served as a music minister and an Episcopal seminarian who served as an education minister. I preached twice a weekend all that summer at generic Protestant services in the campgrounds of that beautiful national park.  I also served as a night desk clerk at the lodge, a fill-in bartender and the MC at the Miss Crater Lake beauty pageant. 

 

My passion for preaching intensified after my ordination to priesthood. Immediately after ordination, I was sent to live alone in “Bible Belt” of southern Kentucky in an area where I was the first resident Catholic priest ever – in the history of the world! I was ask to pastor two very small churches with less than 12 members together. When I entered a local independent Baptist Church to attend my first ministerial association at the invitation of the local Southern Baptist minister, I was asked to leave. It seemed that every minister in the county was preaching on the radio. At the invitation of the local radio station, I had my own radio ministry on Sunday morning, but I was eventually thrown off the air while I was away for vacation after pressure from some of the local ministers.  

 

When I was ordained a priest in 1970, I assumed that I would follow the typical track at that time. I would serve in a large urban or suburban parish as an associate pastor for a couple of turns and then become a pastor of a small parish or two before working my way up to a large parish. When I was chosen to be sent to the “Bible Belt” of southern Kentucky to be part of a Catholic evangelization push, I was shocked and totally unprepared for what I was being asked to do. My first job was to raise the funds for my own salary. Money for continuing education was not yet part of any ministry package at that time. Without funds, I was driven once again in my life to use my imagination.  

 

At the suggestion of the Presbyterian pastor, in the next town, I signed up with him, a Disciples of Christ minister and an Episcopal priest to study for a Doctor of Ministry degree offered by McCormick Seminary in Chicago in “Parish Revitalization.” I thought it would be the closest thing I could find to teach me a few things I needed to know, especially about evangelization. Without funds, I was given a full scholarship by McCormick on two grounds: poverty income and minority religion! By the way, I was the only one to graduate and my thesis was “How One Roman Catholic Church Dealt Assertively With Its Environments: Inside Weakness and Outside Hostility.” Not only did my own members not know much about their own faith, the local community was filled with anti-Catholic stereotypes and prejudices.  It was in that program that I discovered my mantra on “parish revitalization,” whether it be in the Bible Belt of southern Kentucky, the Catholic ghetto of central Kentucky or the urban core of downtown Louisville – if you want to revitalize a congregation, spend your time on preaching, your money on music and then they will ask for education.  

 

After ten years in the Bible Belt of southern Kentucky, I was sent to the so-called Catholic Holy Land of central Kentucky. To my surprise, I found myself focusing again on preaching in an effort to evangelize the life-long Catholics of a 200 year old rural parish in need of revitalization. To my surprise, what had worked in the Bible Belt, worked in that traditional Catholic ghetto.            

 

While a focus on preaching played the most significant role in the growth and revitalization of my first two small parishes, it wasn’t till I became pastor of our center-city Cathedral in downtown Louisville that I became totally convinced of the role of preaching in the revitalization of a congregation.  

 

Once a dynamic parish, especially around 1890-1910, it began to decline seriously in the 1950s and by the time I arrived there in 1983, it had dwindled down to about 110 persons, mostly retired older women living in two local senior living facilities near the cathedral. They was a smattering of visitors from the local hotels on occasion.  

 

Having heard of my “parish revitalization” degree from McCormick Seminary, the Archbishop of Louisville gave me a very simple job description – “Do something with it!” I was warned by the former pastor “not to get my hopes up” “because there aren’t any Catholics living downtown anymore.”   

 

My first day on the job, I took a lawn chair and went across the street to a small park and just sat there looking at it, looking at what was around it and what was down the street from it. Gradually, it occurred to me that I had about three choices, as far as growth: conversions to Catholicism, attract Catholics from other parishes and go after “non-practicing” Catholics that came downtown to work in the high rises around the Cathedral. I was aware that the second largest denomination in the US were “non-practicing Catholics.”  In  a few years, we earned the nickname “The Island of Misfit Toys.” 

 

In a few months, I had developed my three-pronged plan for revitalization: spend time on preaching, spend money on music and show obvious hospitality. Without spending a penny on advertising, I simply focused on preaching and asked my associate pastor to do the same. Word got out and they began to come. I borrowed $70,000 to start a music program. That budget grew quickly to $100,000. I stood at the doors of the Church with the associate pastor for each of our four weekend services – rain or shine. They continued to come. Every month we grew, simple because of our reputation for preaching first, and then for our music and hospitality. In the 14 years, I was there, we grew to 2100 members, with the average age being 25-35, then 35-45, then 65-75. Again, I remind you that we did not advertise. Word of mouth was our best friend. Among those who were “non-practicing,” we attracted a significant number of divorced and remarried Catholics, as well as Gay and Lesbian Catholics.  The “unconditional love of God” from the parables became the central focus of our preaching, something these people needed to hear, but did not really know about. Our budget grew from $90,000 a year to $900,000 a year without one single money talk! We gave away 25% of that $900,000 to local, national and international charities.  

 

Besides our outreach to “fallen away Catholics,” as a Cathedral we had the responsibility of reaching out to the community around us. This mission was eventually taken up by a new 5013C, an interfaith organization, called the Cathedral Heritage Foundation (now the Center for Interfaith Relations), with its own interfaith board. We basically made a pact with the interfaith community that said, “If you help us fix this place up, we will all use it!” It is now used for opening and closing services of religious conventions coming to downtown Louisville, community ecumenical celebration and services in good times and bad and a place of prayer during the day. This foundation established an annual Festival of Faiths which is still celebrated by a week of events celebrating the role of religion in the community. This 5013C raised over $22,000,000 to restore the buildings and has an annual fundraiser to support the work of   the Center for Interfaith Relations. The Cathedral houses a kitchen and dining room for the homeless in its basement, staffed and funded by the community at large, a ministry that has been going on since the `1840s.  The foundation also built a prayer park in an adjacent lot which it purchased. This park contains many religious quotes from the world’s religions, as well as a large fountain, tables, benches and relaxing trees and plants. 

 

In the last several years, including most of my year and half retirement from being director of continuing education at St. Meinrad Seminary, I have been leading priest retreats. In fact, I have done over 100 week-long retreats in seven countries, with about ten more on the calendar. I spend a lot of time in those retreats challenging priests of all ages to take preaching more seriously – for the good of the people they serve, as well as for their own good.  

 

As a former pastor who stills believe seriously in the power of preaching to revitalization of a congregation, there are a few things worth pointing out that have worked to help this happen.   

 

1.    Good preaching takes time.  Priests normally get one day a week off. As pastor, my associates and I took two days off – one for rest and one to produce a printable script for distribution. 

2.    If printed copies of homilies are used in the pulpit, I suggest highly that the preacher learn to write in  what is called an “oral writing style.” When people object that it sounds like he/she is reading it, that has more to do with the style of writing than the practicality of the technique. Most of us write homilies like we wrote term papers. No wonder they sound read! There is another style of writing that finds the precise word, the right turn of phrase and the cadence for the spoken word that most people cannot do “on their feet and out of thin air.”   

3.    Saving used homilies can be a gold mind of ideas for prayer days, days of recollection, retreats, books for spiritual reading and extended preaching occasions like revivals and parish missions.   

4.    Those who show up for Sunday worship are probably less than 50% of those we are called to preach to, so access to a printed copy of the weekend homily is one way to bridge that gap.  Besides “the faithful” we are called to find opportunities to preach to the mad, the sad, the ignored, the bored, other believers and the unchurched.  

5.    Not everyone can hear and not everyone can understand the language used by the preacher, so printed copies, recordings and even translations helps reach more people. 

6.    As pastor, I assumed responsibility to plan the preaching ministry of the parish, especially seasonally. This gave us an opportunity to do homily series during Lent, Advent and other liturgical seasons. 

7.    Money given for printed and recorded homilies was put into a preaching endowment. From this endowment, guest preachers were invited on special occasions. 

8.    This is a strictly personal point of view. I believe in preaching from the pulpit, rather than walking around the sanctuary or up and down the aisles. In a Catholic church, the pulpit, the altar and the chair from which the priest presides are considered sacred objects. When I preach from the pulpit, my own personality is downplayed in favor of my official role as preacher in the assembly. Visually, it becomes less of my own word and more the Word of God that is being announced. It reminds me that I am preaching God’s Word and not my own. But, as I say, this is a personal point of view. 

9.    As a pastor, I considered Sunday preaching as a form of “group spiritual direction.” Spiritual leadership is about the ability to influence people to move from where they are to where God wants them to be through invitation, persuasion, personal example and the skillful use of language from the pulpit. Influencing people, not only individually but as one body, to move deeper and deeper into discipleship is the goal of Sunday preaching by a pastor. 

10.                       Here are a few thoughts from Pope Francis that I have intuitively used in my preaching ministry, long before he said them. “The preacher has the wonderful but difficult task of joining loving hearts, the heart of the Lord and his people.” “To speak from the heart means that our hearts must not just be on fire, be we must also truly understand the biblical text.” “After calling upon the Holy Spirit in prayer, we need to give our entire attention to the biblical text, which needs to be the basis of our preaching. Whenever we stop and attempt to understand the message of a particular text, we are practicing “reverence for the truth.” This is the humility of heart which recognizes that the word is always beyond us, that “we are neither its masters or owners, but its guardians, heralds and servants. This attitude of humble and awe-filled veneration of the word is expressed by taking the time to study it with the greatest care and a holy fear lest we distort it.”  “Preparation for preaching is so important a task that a prolonged time of study, prayer, reflection and pastoral creativity should be devoted to it. A preacher who does not prepare is dishonest and irresponsible with the gifts he has received.”  “The preacher needs to keep his ear to the people and to discover what it is that the faithful need. A preacher has to contemplate the word, but he also has to contemplate his people.” “Let us also keep in mind that we should never respond to questions that nobody asks.” “Another feature of a good homily is that it is positive. It is not so much concerned with pointing out what shouldn’t be done, but with suggesting what can be done better. In any case, if it does draw attention to something negative, it will also attempt to point to a positive and attractive value, lest it remain mired un complaints, laments, criticisms and reproaches. Positive preaching offers hope, points to the future, does not leave us trapped in negativity.” 

11.                       “Nemo dat, quod non habet.” Before we can be a Samuel, about whom it was said, that “not of a word of his was permitted to go without effect,” we have to be a Jeremiah about whose preaching was said, “it was like a fire burning in my heart, imprisoned in my bones; I grew weary holding it in.” 

12.                       Here are a couple of my favorite quotes about preaching. St. Gregory the Great said this, “The preacher must dip his pen into the blood of his own heart then he can also reach the ear of his neighbors.”  When using personal examples, we must also remember the wisdom of Johnny Sain: “People don’t want to hear about the labor pains, they just want to see the baby.” Nobody wants to hear how bad you had it, they want to know how you overcame it. About “contemplating, not just the word itself, but the people who will hear it,” St. Gregory Nazianzus said this, “One and the same exhortation does not fit all. According to the quality of the hearer ought the discourse of teachers to be fashioned.” A sermon tailored to faithful members will not necessarily speak to those alienated or on the margins of the Church and vice versa.   

13.                       In short, the famous Dwight Moody, the other Dwight Moody, said it best, “The best way to revive a church is to build a fire in the pulpit.”  

 

So far, I have talked about the role of preaching in the revitalization of a congregation. Serious preaching can do that! But what I would like to end with is a little something about the affect serious focused preaching has on the one who preaches. Preaching well not only leads others to sanctification, but also to personal sanctification. Serious preaching revitalizes the preacher as well as the parish. A preacher cannot handle that much Scripture in a serious and care-filled way, letting it penetrate one’s being, without it having on effect on the one who handles the Word and the one who hears it preached.  

 

Preaching has been such a part of my own spirituality that I want to be buried clutching a Lectionary. The Archbishop of Winnipeg heard me say that and actually presented me with a copy of the Canadian Lectionary for my casket at the end of the retreat I led for him and his priests. Saint Meinrad Archabbey has a casket business and one of the perks from working there is a free casket. I am now fully ready to go! 

 

Let me end with these two challenges! If you want to revitalize about any congregation, and your own faith in the process, claim your pulpit for spiritual leadership and claim your pulpit for personal sanctification! Truly, it is in giving that we receive!   

 FOR HOMILY COLLECTIONS

 ronknottbooks.com