8

“WE PREACH JESUS CHRIST, OUR LORD”

With this meditation, we move from the first aspect of the apostolic vocation – “to stay with
Jesus,” to the second aspect – being “sent out to preach.” We don't stop being with Jesus
when we go out to preach. Woe to us if we do! Going out to preach is just another way of
staying with Jesus.

After the great imperative, “Come!” at the beginning of their story with Jesus, we hear now
the final commission: “Go!” "Go into the whole world and proclaim the gospel to every
creature” (Mk 16:15). The primary activity of the Church is the proclamation of the Gospel.
This fact has been inculcated in all the most important recent documents of the magisterium:
in the Decree on Missionary Activity (Ad gentes) of Vatican II, in St. Paul VI’s Encyclical,
Evangelii nuntiandi, in Saint John Paul II Apostolic Exhortation to the laity, Christifideles
laici, and in Pope Francis' Apostolic Exhortation, Evangelii Gaudium.

The Content of Christian Preaching

So what is Christian preaching and how do we do it? The First Letter of Peter calls the
apostles “those who preached the good news to you [through] the holy Spirit” (1 Pt 1:12). In
this definition we see the two constitutive elements of Christian preaching: its content and its
method. The Gospel is the object to be proclaimed, the Holy Spirit is the method, that is, “the
medium” or “the way” in which to do it. I will focus my reflections on the content in this
session, and on the method in our next session.

Peter summed up the entire content of the Christian proclamation in a single word, “Gospel.”
This word has taken on different meanings. It can mean the four canonical gospels, that is, the
good news proclaimed by Jesus, but it can also mean the good news about Jesus. In the first
meaning, Jesus is the subject of the Gospel; in the second, he is the object. The same
distinction is expressed today by distinguishing the preaching Jesus from the preached Christ.

In this second connotation the term "Gospel" indicates the Paschal Mystery of Christ’s death
and resurrection for our salvation. The Gospel is Christ! Saint Paul encapsulated in this name
the entire content of the Christian proclamation: “We proclaim Christ crucified” (1 Cor 1:23);
“For we do not preach ourselves but Jesus Christ as Lord” (2 Cor 4:5).

With this in mind, let's look at some of the challenges Christian preaching is currently facing.
What place does Jesus have in our society and in our culture? I think we can talk of a presence
and at the same time an absence of Christ. On a certain level—for example, in entertainment
and mass media in general—Jesus Christ is very present and is even a “Superstar,” according
to the title of a famous musical about him. In an interminable series of stories, films, and
books, sometimes under the pretext of mysterious, new historical documents, writers have
manipulated the figure of Christ. In fact, this has become a fashionable trend, a new literary
genre. People take advantage of the vast resonance associated with the name of Jesus and
what he represents for a large part of humanity in order to ensure a lot of publicity at minimal
cost. This is literary parasitism.

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From a certain vantage point, Jesus Christ is very present in our culture. But if we look
specifically in terms of faith where Jesus belongs more than anywhere else, we notice just the
contrary, a disturbing absence if not an outright rejection of his person.

What do those who call themselves “believers” in the Western world really believe in? Most
often, they believe in the existence of a Supreme Being, a Creator, and in an “afterlife.” This
is a deist faith which hasn't yet arrived at Christian faith; as Karl Barth noted, this is religion
but not yet faith.1 Various sociological surveys have pointed this out even in countries and
region well-rooted in ancient Christian traditions. In practice, Jesus Christ is absent in this
kind of religiosity.

The dialogue between science and faith, without meaning to, tends to put Christ between
parentheses. Its focus is God the Creator, on whether the world is the result of an “intelligent
design” or of chance. The historical person of Jesus of Nazareth has no place there. The same
can be seen in the dialogue with philosophy which deals with metaphysical concepts rather
than with historical realities, and, of course, in the dialogue between religions where the very
name of Jesus is never pronounced.

On the whole, what happened in Athens when Paul preached there is being repeated on a
global scale. As long as the apostle spoke of “the God who made the world and all that is in
it” and said that “we too are his offspring,” the learned Athenians listened to him with
interest. But when they heard about resurrection of Christ and of the dead they responded
politely, “We should like to hear you on this some other time” (see Acts 17:22-32).

We only need to take a quick look at the New Testament to understand how far we are now
from the original meaning of the word “faith.” For Paul, the faith that justifies sinners and
confers the Holy Spirit (Gal 3:2), that is, the faith that saves is faith in Jesus Christ, faith in
the Paschal Mystery of his death and resurrection. For John, as well, the faith “that conquers
the world” is faith in Jesus Christ: “Who [indeed] is the victor over the world but the one who
believes that Jesus is the Son of God ?” (1 Jn 5:4-5).

Given our current reality, our first task is to make a great act of faith. Jesus told us, “Take
courage, I have conquered the world” (Jn 16:33). He not only overcame the world of his time
but the world forever in terms of what is impervious and resistant to the gospel in people. So
there is no need for us to be afraid or to resign ourselves to the current situation. The recurring
prophecies about the inevitable end of the Church and of Christianity in a future technological
society make me smile. We have a much more authoritative prophecy to rely on: “Heaven and
earth will pass away, but my words will not pass away” (Mt 24:35).

But we cannot remain passive. We need to respond in an adequate way to the challenges that
faith in Christ is facing in our time. If we intend to re-evangelize the post-Christian world, I
think it is imperative that we know what the apostles did to evangelize the pre-Christian
world! The two situations have so much in common. So let's look at these two issues: What
was the first evangelization like?, and How did faith in Christ overcome the world?

Kerygma and Didaché

1
Karl Barth, The Epistle to the Romans, trans. from the 6th ed. by Edwyn C. Hoskyns (New York: Oxford
University Press, 1933), pp. 128-140, 365ff.

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It is clear that all of the New Testament authors presumed that their readers were acquainted
with a common tradition (paradosis) that went back to the earthly Jesus. This tradition has
two aspects or components: a component called “preaching” or proclamation (kērygma) about
what God did through Jesus of Nazareth, and a component called “teaching” (didachē) that
presents ethical norms for right conduct on the part of believers.2 Various Pauline letters
incorporate this twofold structure, with kerygma in the first part and exhortation and practical
advice flowing from it in the second.

Preaching or kērygma is called “the gospel.”3 Teaching or didachē is called the “law” or the
commandment of Christ that is summed up as charity.4 Of these two, it is the first—kērygma
or gospel—that gives the Church its origin. The second—the law or charity—flows from the
first and outlines an ideal moral life for the Church. It is meant to “form” the faith of the
Church. St. Paul clearly distinguishes the two different stages and respective roles. It was his
ministry of preaching that made him a "father" in the faith for the Corinthians, as opposed to
the teachers who came after him. He says, “Even if you should have countless guides to
Christ, yet you do not have many fathers, for I became your father in Christ Jesus through the
gospel.” (1 Cor 4:15).

Faith arises only in the presence of kerygma or proclamation. Referring to faith in Christ, the
apostle asked, “How can they believe in him of whom they have not heard? And how can they
hear without someone to preach?” (Rm 10:14)—literally “without someone who proclaims
the kerygma (chōris kēryssontos).” Paul concluded, “faith comes from what is heard, and
what is heard comes through the word of Christ” (Rm 10:17), and “what is heard” refers
precisely to the “gospel” or kerygma.

Faith comes by hearing the preaching of the word. But what exactly is the object of
“preaching?" From the lips of Jesus, the good news, which forms the basis for his parables
and all his teaching, is this: “The kingdom of God has come upon you!” (cf. Mt. 12:28 and Lk
11:20). So what, then, was the content of the apostles' preaching? The work of God in Jesus of
Nazareth! While that is true, there is something even more specific, the vital nucleus of
everything else, which acted like the blade in the front of the plough that breaks up the soil,
turns over the ground, and makes a furrow.

That more specific nucleus is the exclamation “Jesus is Lord!” (cf. 1 Cor 12:3; Rm 10:9-12;
Phil 2:11; 1 Cor 15:3-7; Rm 1:3-4) proclaimed and received in the wonder of a faith statu
nascenti, that is, in the act of being birthed. The mystery of this word is such that it cannot be
said “except by the Holy Spirit” (1 Cor 12:3). By itself, it leads whoever believes in his
resurrection into salvation: “If you confess with your mouth that Jesus is Lord and believe in
your heart that God raised him from the dead, you will be saved” (Rm 10:9).

What Jesus preached—“The kingdom of God is at hand!” (cf. Mt 3:2; Mt 4:17; Mk 1:15)—
becomes, as the apostles preach it, the exclamation “Jesus is Lord!” And in this there is no
contradiction, but rather perfect harmony and continuity between the Jesus who preaches and
the Christ preached. To proclaim “Jesus is Lord!” is the same as saying that the kingdom and
sovereignty of God over the world has now come to pass in the crucified and risen Christ.

2
See Charles Harold Dodd, History and the Gospel (London: Hodder and Stoughton, 1938), pp. 36-37.
3
See, for example, Mk 1:1; Rm 15:19; Gal 1:7.
4
See Gal 6:2; 1 Cor 7:25; Jn 15:12; 1 Jn 4:21.

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After Pentecost, the apostles did not travel around the world just repeating, “Jesus is Lord!”
No, what they did whenever they were about to preach the faith in a certain place for the first
time was to go straight to the heart of the gospel, proclaiming two facts—Jesus died, Jesus is
risen—and proclaiming the reason for each of these facts: “Christ died for our sins;” “and was
raised for our justification” (see 1 Cor 15:3; Rm 4:25).

Paul records what he proclaimed to the Corinthians when he first came to them this way:
“Now I am reminding you, brothers, of the gospel I preached to you, which you indeed
received ...For I handed on to you as of first importance what I also received: that Christ died
for our sins in accordance with the scriptures; that he was buried; that he was raised on the
third day in accordance with the scriptures” (1 Cor 15:1-4). This is what he calls “the gospel.”
This is also the core of Peter’s sermons in the Acts of the Apostles: “God has made him both
Lord and Messiah, this Jesus whom you crucified” (see Acts 2:22-36; 3:14-19; 10:39-42).

The proclamation that “Jesus is Lord!” is clearly nothing but the conclusion, sometimes
implicit and sometimes explicit, of this brief story told in an always-lively, new way (even if
it is substantially the same). And at the same time, it summarizes the story and makes it
operative in the one who hears it. “Christ Jesus...emptied himself... becoming obedient to
death, even death on a cross. Because of this, God greatly exalted him...[so] that every tongue
confess that Jesus Christ is Lord” (Phil 2:5-11).

The proclamation “Jesus is Lord!” does not, by itself alone, constitute the entirety of
preaching, but it is nevertheless its soul, so to speak, the sun that illuminates it. It establishes a
kind of communion with the story of Christ through the “host” of this proclamation, and it
makes one think by analogy of the communion that is achieved with Christ’s body through
the host of the Eucharist.

To come to faith is the unexpected and wondrous opening of a person’s eyes to this light.
Recalling the moment of his conversion, Tertullian described it as a startling exit from the
dark “womb of common ignorance...to the one light of Truth!”5 It was like the discovery of a
new world. In the First Letter of Peter it is described as being called “out of darkness into his
wonderful light” (1 Pt 2:9; see Col 1:12ff).

In his exhortation, Evangelii gaudium, Pope Francis has some beautiful insights about the role
of the kerygma in Christian preaching. He says:

“In catechesis too, we have rediscovered the fundamental role of the first
announcement or kerygma, which needs to be the center of all evangelizing activity
and all efforts at Church renewal. This first proclamation is called “first” not because
it exists at the beginning and can then be forgotten or replaced by other more
important things. It is first in a qualitative sense because it is the principal
proclamation, the one which we must hear again and again in different ways, the one
which we must announce one way or another throughout the process of catechesis, at
every level and moment.[…]. We must not think that in catechesis the kerygma gives
way to a supposedly more “solid” formation. Nothing is more solid, profound, secure,
meaningful and wisdom-filled than that initial proclamation” (Evangelii gaudium 164-
165).

5
Tertullian, Apology, 39, 9 (“ad lucem expavescentes veritatis”), ed. by Robert D. Sider, vol. 2, Fathers of the
Church (Washington, DC: The Catholic University of America Press, 2001), p. 61.

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Rediscovering the Kerygma

Let us look at some of the essential characteristics of the kerygma. As the exegete Heinrich
Schlier explained so well, it has an assertive and authoritative character—not a conversational
or dialectical one. So it doesn't need to justify itself with philosophical or apologetic
arguments. You either accept it or not—that's all there is to it. It's not something we can just
dispose of, because kerygma judges everything. It cannot be established by anyone because it
originates in God himself, thus becoming the foundation of existence.6 It is prophetic speech
in the strongest sense of the term.

Celsus, a pagan writer of the second century, reported indignantly that Christians act like
people who believe without reason. He is affronted that some of them do not wish to discuss
the reasons for and against what they believe but keep repeating, “'Do not examine, but
believe!’ and ‘Your faith will save you!’...[and] ‘the wisdom of this life is bad,
but...foolishness is a good thing.’”7

Celsus (who on this point seems extraordinarily close to post-modern proponents of radical
relativism) would have liked Christians to present their faith in a dialectical manner,
submitting it entirely to investigation and debate. By so doing, however, the Christian faith
would have been hijacked into the general framework—acceptable to philosophy as well—as
just one more attempt by humanity to understand itself and the world, efforts that always
remain provisional and open-ended.

Of course, the refusal by Christians to give proofs and to have discussions did not pertain to
the whole path of faith but only to its initial beginning. They did not shy away from debate
and from giving “an explanation to anyone who asks you for a reason for your hope” (see 1 Pt
3:15). The apologists in the second and third centuries are proof of that. But they believed that
faith was not able to spring from that debate but should precede it as a work of the Spirit and
not of reason. Rational arguments could, at best, serve as a preparation for faith and, once
faith was accepted, demonstrate its “reasonableness.”

Another characteristic of kerygma is that it has an explosive or germinative character, so to

speak. It is more like the seed that becomes a tree than the ripe fruit at the top of the tree,
whose fruit in Christianity is constituted by charity. One does not obtain it by distilling or
summarizing tradition, as if it were its marrow. Rather, kerygma stands apart, or, better, at the
beginning of everything. Everything else develops from it, including the four gospels that
were written afterwards precisely to illustrate it.

There has been a change concerning this point due to the current situation of the Church. To
the extent that Christianity is dominant in any given place and everything is "Christian", or is
regarded as "Christian", people are less aware of the importance of the initial choice by which
they become Christian. What is stressed the most is not so much the initial moment of faith,
the miracle of coming to faith, but rather the completeness and orthodoxy of the faith itself.

This situation has a strong bearing on evangelization today. Churches with a strong dogmatic
and theological tradition (like the Catholic, Orthodox, Anglican and other churches) risk
finding themselves at a disadvantage if, beneath the immense heritage of doctrine, laws, and

6
Heinrich Schlier, Die Zeit der Kirche [The Time of the Church] (Freiburg: Herder, 1958), chapt. 15.
7
Quoted in Origen, Against Celsus, 1, 9.

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institutions, they do not rediscover that original nucleus which is able to generate faith by
itself.

People today often lack any personal knowledge of Christ, so presenting them with the entire
range of doctrine is like putting one of those heavy brocaded mantles worn by the clergy on
the shoulders of a baby. We are more prepared by our past to be “shepherds” than to be
“fishers of men", that is, we are better prepared to nourish people who come to church than to
bring new people into the church or to bring back those who have drifted away and live on its
margins.

What is the reason for the alarming departure of Catholics in some countries to other churches
or even to “fundamentalist” Christian sects? They are often drawn by a “fundamental”
proclamation that puts them in direct contact with the person of Jesus. We rejoice that these
people have found Jesus, we cannot accept however that to achieve this they had to leave the
Catholic Church.

The problem is not solved by issuing warnings or, even worse, by suspending all ecumenical
dialogue or resuming animosities. We must put forth in the Catholic Church, in a catholic
way, enriched by all the immense reserves of experience and doctrine of the tradition, a
proclamation with the same force and essentiality as the one they find elsewhere, but with the
additional guarantee of authenticity and completeness that the great tradition of the Catholic
Church can give.

The core proclamation needs to be presented to people clearly and succinctly at least once in
their lives. In the pastoral life of a parish, you should expect to find the kerygma proclaimed
at all the key moments of Christian life: the Easter Vigil, retreats, missions. And perhaps the
most propitious occasions are funerals because when confronted with death people ask
questions, their hearts are open, and they are less distracted than at other times. There is
nothing like the Christian kerygma that can speak to human beings about death in a way that
is commensurate with that terrible experience.

Since time immemorial, the human race has been asking some questions and people today are
no exception. Who are we? Where do we come from? Where are we going? In The
Ecclesiastical History of the English People Venerable Bede recounted how the Christian
faith came to Northern England. When missionaries from Rome arrived in Northumberland,
King Edwin called a council of dignitaries to decide whether or not to allow them to spread
their new message. One of them stood up and said:

The present life of man, O king, seems to me, in comparison with that time which is
unknown to us, like to the swift flight of a sparrow through the room wherein you sit
at supper in winter amid your officers and ministers, with a good fire in the midst,
whilst the storms of rain and snow prevail abroad; the sparrow, I say, flying in at one
door and immediately out at another, whilst he is within is safe from the wintry storm;
but after a short space of fair weather he immediately vanishes out of your sight into
the dark winter from which he has emerged. So this life of man appears for a short
space, but of what went before or what is to follow we are utterly ignorant. If,
therefore, this new doctrine contains something more certain, it seems justly to
deserve to be followed.13

Perhaps the Christian faith will return to the Western secularized world for the same reason

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that it made its entrance: as the only reality that offers serious answers to the greatest
questions of life on earth.

We have an ally in this effort. All attempts by the secular world to replace the Christian cry ,
the kerygma, with screams and manifestos have met with failure. I often use the example of
the famous painting by the Norwegian artist Edvard Munch, called The Scream, a simple
version of which some years ago was sold in New York for 118 million dollars. A man stands
on a bridge with a reddish background. His hands are wrapped around his wide open mouth
from which he emits a cry. We immediately understand that it is an empty cry full of anguish,
without words, only sound. Literally a “scream”. This image seems to me the most effective
way to describe the situation of modern humanity. Having cast aside the cry full of content—
the kerygma—humanity now finds itself having to scream its existential angst in the void.

The bishops and the preaching ministry

To this wretched world waiting for an answer to its existential problems we are called to go
and proclaim the Gospel. Before concluding I should like to say something about the bishop's
specific task regarding preaching. One of the inspirers of the ecclesiology of Vatican II, Louis
Bouyer, wrote these rather unusual words:

The pastoral function is not, first of all, a governing function…It is first a function of
proclaiming the Gospel as ambassadors of Christ…It is also the function of presiding
over the Eucharist, in which the mystery of the life of Christ having been announced
becomes sacramentally present…It is only as a consequence of this basic ministry of
the Word and the sacraments that the apostolic ministry implies a governing power,
that is, a power of applying the Word to the whole existence of the community.8

The very name “apostle” (from the Greek verb apostello) means sent out with a commission.
Saint Peter indicated once and for all what the absolute priorities of the apostles and their
successors were: “We shall devote ourselves to prayer and to the ministry of the word” (Acts
6:4). The most solemn advice that Paul addressed to Timothy (the first bishop of the Church
in terms of being a “successor to the apostles”) was to “proclaim the word; be persistent
whether it is convenient or inconvenient” (2 Tm 4:2). This is also how the great bishops of the
Patristic era—Basil, Ambrose, Augustine, and so many others after them—conceived of
pastoral ministry.

What does the office of preaching represent nowadays in the life of pastors? Saint Gregory
the Great wrote:

There are people who would listen to the good word but preachers are lacking. The
world is full of priests, and still those who work in the vineyard of the Lord are hard to
find. We have assumed the priestly office but we do not perform the works that the
office brings along with it.... We have immersed ourselves in earthly affairs and it is
one thing that we have assumed with the priestly office and quite another thing that we
show with our deeds. We abandon the ministry of preaching and we are called

8
Louis Bouyer, The Church of God: Body of Christ and Temple of the Spirit (San Francisco: Ignatius Press,
2011), pp. 424-425. (Original: L’Église de Dieu [Paris: Éditions du Cerf, 1970]).

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 bishops, but perhaps rather to our condemnation, given that we possess the honorific
title and not the qualities.9

Perhaps Saint Gregory was alluding to some abuse particular to his own time that no longer
exists. I hope so, but nonetheless, his words are worth our reflection.

We need to ask ourselves a serious question. Where do the most alive and most valid energies
of the Catholic Church go? What does the office of preaching represent among all the
possible activities and destinations of young priests? I seem to notice one serious drawback—
that only the elements that remain after the choice for academic studies, administration,
diplomacy, and youth formation are dedicated to preaching.

Another personal reflection has to do with the relationship between preaching and theological
activity in the Church. I was struck reading the affirmations of two noted contemporary
theologians. Henri De Lubac wrote:

“The ministerium prædicationis is not the vulgarization of a doctrinal teaching in a

more abstract form that would be prior and superior to it. It is, on the contrary, the
doctrinal teaching itself in its highest form. This was true of the first Christian
preaching, that of the apostles, and it is equally true of the preaching of their
successors in the Church: the Fathers, the Doctors, and our Pastors in the present
time.”10

Hans Urs von Balthasar also spoke about the “mission of preaching in the Church, to which
the theological mission itself is subordinate.”11 These affirmations struck me because it seems
that the relationship that exists in fact between these two activities, at least in the opinion of
the majority of the people and of priests themselves, is precisely the opposite—that preaching
is intended to be the "vulgarization" of a more technical and abstract teaching, prior and
superior to it, namely, theology.

Saint Paul, the model of all preachers, the “preacher of the truth” par excellence, certainly put
preaching before everything and subordinated everything to it. By preaching he did theology;
and it was not a theology from which fundamental ideas would be extracted in order then to
be transmitted to the simple faithful in preaching. “For Christ did not send me to baptize but
to preach the gospel....” (1 Cor 1:17). “Woe to me,” he also said, “if I do not preach it” (1 Cor
9:16).

What is at stake here is the very conversion of people and their coming to faith. Faith depends
on proclamation: fides ex auditu (Rm 10:17). The word is the “place” of the decisive
encounter between God and humans. The liturgy is an essential element in the life of the
Church but it comes after. A beautiful liturgy can edify, can help the person who already has
faith to grow, but very rarely a non-believer who might be present would be “cut to the heart”
as happened to those who heard Peter speak the day of Pentecost (cf. Acts 2:37).

At the end of this reflection on the office of preaching the Gospel we ask ourselves the same
question St. Paul asks in his letter to the Corinthians: "Who could ever be up to this task?",

9
St. Gregory the Great, Omelie sui Vangeli, XVII, 3 (PL 76, 1139s).
10
Henri de Lubac, Exegese medievale, vol. I, part 2 (Paris, 1959) 670.
11
Hans Urs von Balthasar, Contemplative Prayer, quoted by de Lubac.

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and here is his reply, that still applies to us: "We're not ourselves able to think something as if
it came from us; our ability comes from God. He has made us to be ministers of a new
covenant, not of the letter but of the Spirit [...] We hold this treasure in earthen vessels, that
the surpassing power may be of God and not from us." (2 Cor 2:16; 3:5-6; 4:7).