Many of us might think that Jesus has His priorities mixed up. After all, imagine how full our churches would be if Jesus were working tremendous miracles of healing. We could depopulate the hospitals. People would come from every city and state to be cured. The dramatic exorcisms would bring national and international media.
All those with cancer or paralysis or back pain or emotional scars would bring them to church and leave completely healed. Probably it would also bring some of the criminals and drug dealers who, in seeing this incredible divine power working through a man, might be brought to conversion.
But that’s not the way Jesus chooses to do it. Instead, He sends a man ordained in His person to preach the gospel of the Kingdom. From Jesus’ own divine — and therefore correct — perspective, the greatest gift He can give any of us, whether we’re ill and suffering or not, is His word! Jesus wants us here most to listen to His preaching, to embrace His word, and in consuming the Word-made-flesh in the Eucharist, to become so one with the Word that we become living commentaries of life in the Kingdom.
In doing so, He’s not ignoring all our ills and problems, but trying to address them at their root. All of these sufferings and difficulties are symptoms of the same essential cancer: the cancer of sin. Physical pain comes as a result of the first sin of our parents at the Fall. Our emotional pain and many of our illnesses come from the wounds that our sins and others’ have caused. Jesus isn’t ducking any of those difficulties, but in His divine omniscience is trying to lead us to what is the cure for them all.
We see Jesus’ priorities at work in the lives of His Apostles. They stressed that proclamation of the Kingdom was paramount. The first time Jesus sent them out, He gave them instructions first to preach that the Kingdom is among them, and then to cure (Mt 10:7-8). In the time of the early Church, the Apostles recognized that because their first duty was to “prayer” and the “ministry of the word,” they no longer had the time for other good works of service, so they ordained seven deacons (Acts 6:3-4). St. Paul even gave up baptizing — which others could do — so that he could travel more to preach God’s saving word: “For Christ did not send me to baptize,” he said, “ but to proclaim the Gospel” (1 Cor 1:17). You may be surprised to discover that the fathers of the Second Vatican Council, in their document on the priesthood, said that “it is the first duty of priests…to preach the Gospel of God to all men” (Presbyterorum Ordinis, 4). Preaching is a more important duty than even the celebration of the sacraments.
St. Bernardine of Siena, a great 15th-century Franciscan preacher, was once asked a very interesting hypothetical question by those who were wondering why he stressed so much the importance of preaching. They queried, “If a Christian community for twenty years could only have one thing or the other — either 20 years of good preaching with no access to the Mass and the Eucharist, or 20 years of access to the Mass, but bad or no preaching — which would be better? Think of what your response would be to the same question. St. Bernardine’s answer, without any hesitation, surprised them: it was better to have 20 years of good preaching! He answered that way because he was convinced that after 20 years of the Eucharist with no or bad preaching, the people would no longer understand the importance of the Mass and would begin to take the Eucharist for granted; whereas, after 20 years of good preaching without the Mass, the people would be salivating for the Eucharist and the other sacraments.
When you look at the recent history of Catholicism in the US, St. Bernardine’s point seems validated. There have been countless conversions from Evangelical Protestantism — including many ministers — to the Catholic faith because their study and lengthy preaching on the Bible led them to the conclusion that the Eucharist really is Jesus, and they’ve come into the Church trying to make up for lost time. On the other hand, Catholics, who have been complaining for decades about bad preaching or even no preaching, seem to take the awesome gift of the Eucharist for granted, as seen by rates of attendance at Mass and at Eucharistic adoration.
Two thousand years ago, Jesus left those who were seeking Him in order to go to other villages to preach the gospel of the Kingdom. After His Ascension, He changed His method of operation. He won’t leave our parishes to go to other neighborhoods or cities. Instead He will stay and send you to the other villages, like He did His first disciples. He does this not because He is lazy, but because He loves, and He realizes that the greatest gift He could give you is the vocation to share in His mission of the proclamation of the Kingdom for the salvation of the world.
Father Roger J. Landry is a priest of the Diocese of Fall River, Massachusetts, ordained in 1999. After receiving a biology degree from Harvard College, Fr. Landry studied for the priesthood in Maryland, Toronto, and for several years in Rome. He speaks widely on the thought of Pope John Paul II and on apologetics, and is currently parochial administrator of St. Anthony of Padua in New Bedford, Massachusetts, and Executive Editor of The Anchor, the weekly newspaper of the Diocese of Fall River. An archive of his homilies and articles can be found at catholicpreaching.com.
This article is adapted from one of Father Landry’s recent homilies.
