A Preaching Life

Msgr. Mongelluzzo, our dear preaching teacher, used to say that it was "a preaching life," by which I understood that preaching from the Sacred Scriptures wasn't to be just an activity of our lives but something woven into the whole fabric of our days. This was easy to understand when I was at the parish and preaching almost every day, often enough more than once. But in my current circumstances, in which I preach perhaps once a month, I sometimes wonder what Msgr.'s affirmation might mean.

Perhaps there is something like an answer in a grace that I have sometimes, of which today is a good example, when the Scriptures invite me to pray for particular people. Today's gospel:

"Blessed are those servants
whom the master finds vigilant on his arrival.
Amen, I say to you, he will gird himself,
have them recline at table, and proceed to wait on them.
And should he come in the second or third watch
and find them prepared in this way,
blessed are those servants.” (Luke 12:37-38)

That used to be on my go-to gospel passages for wakes. I would preach the great reversal--the master who waits on the servants--as our hope for our dead, that they might come to the heavenly rest, cared for and nourished by the Master who makes himself Servant.

So in the pause after the homily this morning, I was invited to pray again for all those deceased and their families with whom I had once prayed and preached this gospel. It's a preaching life.