Articulate And Eloquent

By Fr. Roy Cimagala

THAT gospel parable about the sower and seed (cfr. Mk 4,1-20) somehow reminds us that we need to be most articulate and eloquent regarding our duty to proclaim in all places and to all kinds of people—from the most simple to the most sophisticated and complicated people—the saving word of God.

Obviously for this, we need to study well the word of God and now the doctrine of the Church, internalizing them to such an extent that we can feel confident that we truly are proclaiming God’s word and not just ours nor somebody else’s, nor just words of an earthly ideology.

Especially these days when we have a profusion of confusing and even openly conflicting views and opinions that are based only on things cultural, ideological, political, economic, etc., we need to learn how to be articulate and to be eloquent in remitting the unifying and saving word of God that really gives us the whole picture of things.

We have to be ready always to preach the word of God just as St. Paul reminded us once: “Preach the word, be prepared in season and out of season; correct, rebuke and encourage—with great patience ad careful instruction.”

Let us ask God for the gift of gab so we can preach his word correctly, fluently and persuasively. Obviously, to carry out this mission, we need to know our Lord and his teachings. We have to go to him and read the Gospel. Reading and meditating on it should be a regular practice for us, a habit meant to keep us in touch with him.

Thus, every time we read the Gospel, we have to understand by our faith that we are engaging with our Lord in an actual and living way. We are listening to him, and somehow seeing him. We can use our imagination to make ourselves as one more character in any scene depicted by the Gospel.

For this, we need to look for the appropriate time and place. We have to be wary of our tendency to be dominated by a lifestyle of activism and pragmatism that would blunt our need for recollection and immersion in the life of Christ.

The drama of Christ’s life here on earth has to continue in our own life. Thus, we need to continually conform our mind and heart to the Gospel, an affair that demands everything from us.

Our problem is that the Gospel has ceased to be what it ought to be to many people. It has been downgraded as one more book among many others that we have. And worse, since it does not give us immediate practical knowledge, many of us give it low priority.

We really need to internalize Christ’s words, not in the way an actor internalizes his script. We internalize it by making it the very life of our mind and heart, the very impulse of our emotion and passions. It should be the soul of our whole life.

Thus, when we preach we cannot help but somehow showcase the drama inside our heart, giving others a glimpse of how our heart is actually taking, handling and delivering the word of Christ.

Preaching should reflect the condition of our heart as it grapples with the living word of God. It should not just be a matter of declaiming or orating, reduced to the art of speaking and stage performing, a mere play of our talents. We should realize that when we preach, we do so in the very person of Christ himself!

Email: roycimagala@gmail.com