the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit hail Mary full of grace the
Lord is with thee blessed art thou amongst women and blessed is the fruit
of thy womb Jesus our Lady seat of wisdom st. Joseph st. James of the March
our patron saints and guardian angels near the Father nor the Son of the Holy
Spirit amen the saying to be celebrate today in the Franciscan order St. James
of the March was one of the great lights of the Franciscan order who along with
some other companions helped bring about a renewal of the Franciscan order and
helped bring about a renewed zeal of the
Franciscan order a renewed zeal of the Franciscan order and helped bring about a renewed zeal of the Franciscan order and helped bring about a renewed zeal of the
her preciso deie that they were a little bright I mean and a feisty flash I am a
a δια irona that was door and did I just this year include this is about four and five
Musik that does very much that became history describingocalypsi open and brought back to the
her preciso does very much that this is about three or four season four or five
spirit in his day, but he was assigned by his superiors to preach. His whole task of
his apostolate was to preach, to go around Italy and Europe and preach the Word of God.
As he says in his writing in the Office of Readings today, how important is the preaching
of the Word of God? And we're in this year of faith, you know, that Pope Benedict has
called and, you know, Scripture says, how is faith obtained? Through the preaching of
the Word. And what is preached? But the Word of God. And that is what is so important,
that the Church's work of evangelization, of spreading the good news, is to preach the
Gospel, to preach the Word of God. And we know as Catholics that is, and for the, you
know, the medieval...
Catholics, they believed, understood that the Word of God did not just mean the sacred
Scriptures, it meant all of the revelation of Christ, of course, tradition and sacred
Scripture. The two go together. For you cannot really completely and fully preach the Word
of God if you leave out the other things that the Church has in its memory because of the
Holy Spirit that is not just confined to the
sacred page, that it's all of the sacred deposit of the faith that Christ has left
to us. And the preaching of the Word of God has, in a certain sense, it's almost a sacramental
because it does dispose people for grace. It does open them if they are properly prepared
and disposed to receive many graces, as St. James recounts in his writing in the Office
of Readings today, which, if you have the Franciscan property...
I encourage you to take a look at it and meditate on it. He says,
29. How is vice overcome and virtue implanted in souls but by the preaching of the Word
of God?
30. How is faith obtained?
How do people grow in their understanding of their faith? How is that obtained by the
preaching of the Word of God?
31. How is... and he lists a lot of things there that all are obtained through the preaching
of the Word of God.
32. How do we grow in love?
love for God by the preaching of the Word of God. All these things, it's so important. And that is
why during this year of faith, we need to, as Pope Benedict says, we have to go back,
each and every one of us, and maybe even look at the contents of the faith. Because the faith has
a certain content. It's not this airy-fairy kind of, you know, nebulous thoughts. It has certain
concrete things that we can read and understand about the Trinity, about the nature of grace,
about virtue and vice. As St. Francis told his friars, they are to preach. And he told them,
virtue and vice, they are to preach about that. So that people know what is good and what is bad,
what is right and what is wrong. And that they were to preach briefly, he says. But that doesn't
mean a half.
hour. For in his day, when St. Francis, when men went to preach, they'd preach for a whole day.
So obviously, he isn't saying that you're supposed to give a five-minute homily or a half-minute
or a half-hour homily necessarily. It's just that when you preach, you know, you are to get to the
point and get to the matter of whatever it is you're talking about and to truly inculcate into
the people the things they need to know for the salvation of their soul.
For it's so important. And, you know, the idea that somehow we, that our preaching has to be
improved, as Cardinal Dolan and others have said, well, it needs to be improved in its content. It
needs to be truly teaching the people what they need to know for the salvation of their souls,
or they wouldn't be voting so mindlessly and so carelessly.
It would be something that they would see that every one of our actions has a certain moral
outcome, has a certain moral accountability. And we need to foster that again in the faithful.
We have a lot of competition that St. James of the March didn't have. He didn't have a media that he
had to compete with that was organized like, you know, today we have such a massive
other network where people can get information. In many cases, it's secular and without any mention
of God or morals. But the other thing is that he didn't have a media that was antagonistic
necessarily towards the church. There was maybe people who would, you know, heckle a preacher maybe
in his day, as the famous Capuchin preacher who was preaching, you know, heckled him because he
was preaching about hell.
And about the wheeling and gnashing of teeth. And somebody in the crowd said to him, well, what if I don't have
any teeth at the end of my life? And he says, don't worry, teeth will be provided. You know, so, but we have
a media today that is, in many cases, counter gospel, counter what the church wants to preach.
And so we even more so have to be zealous in preaching the faith. And we can help to preach the faith
by such things as the Apostle of the Catholic Radio, which is a very important thing today.
The media, using the internet, using even magazines and publications. We still have to have
the written word on a piece of paper. The internet is not the only, nor is it a secure way of getting
the message across. If you have not something in the written word, and it's on a piece of paper,
it's easily taken away from people to have access to. But as we know, our nation has always, has one of
its freedoms, the freedom of the press. And it's important that the preaching of the Word of God is
on a written page. That it is still accessible to all. And important that we remain always in a way that people
can get access to the truth. Today, as we ponder and we are also meditating on the last things of the last days
of the world, as we do on this last year of the, or last week of the ordinary time, we are reminded of,
you know, that the end of the world will come sometime. And that it will come with a certain final battle
between good and evil. And our Lord reminds us in the gospel today that we're going to be handed over and we'll have to give an account.
Even to those who are out to persecute us. He says, do not worry, you will be given the grace to speak and to say what you need to say by the power of the Holy Spirit.
But he mentions here that the adversaries who are going to hand us over are not going to be strangers to us. Matter of fact, he says, they're going to be your friends and neighbors.
Matter of fact, he says, they're going to be your friends and neighbors.
relatives. They're going to be people you know who are not going to like what you have to say
or your example is not pleasing to them because you are convicting them of sin. It's going to be
your own family and friends, relatives who are going to hand you over to be persecuted.
But he says, do not worry if you are hated because of my name. Not a hair of your head
will be destroyed but your perseverance will secure your lives. Our perseverance in the faith
will secure our eternal life. And so important is it that we
continue to preach the word of God in season and out of season. That we preach it, of course,
by word and example and that we not lose heart but know that it's going according to God's plan
and that we are going to be heard.
And so we hope that you will continue to do all this work. And that we are going to be heard.
that nothing is happening that he doesn't have an account of, or that he doesn't have
all taken care of in his divine providence.
What we want to make sure is that we are found doing good and not evil, that we are pleasing
the Lord night and day, 24-7, and that we are always ready to be taken at any moment's
notice, and that we are also ready to give an account of the hope that is within us.
Let us ask that through the intercession of St. James of the March, that the word of God
may continue to be preached in our world today, not only by priests and bishops who have,
in a certain sense, a greater responsibility and an office to do so, but by all the faithful,
all those who are blessed.
Baptized in the name of the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, have an obligation to preach
in one way or another the word of God, to preach the faith to those around them.
In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit, amen.