[00:00] From the first letter of St. Paul to the Corinthians, we hear how St. Paul says, "I did not come proclaiming the mystery of God with sublimity of words or of wisdom, for I resolved to know nothing while I was with you, except Jesus Christ, and Him crucified." He came in weakness and trembling, and it's a common teaching that St. Paul had difficulty

[00:35] in preaching. They say whether he had a lisp or whether he just had a natural fear of being up in front of people and preaching, but preaching was not his strong suit in that sense. I'm sure he became better and better, but we do have to remember at the time there's no TV, no internet. The main, I guess you say, entertainment or the thing that people would flock to hear and to see are preachers, orators. So back then, it was something that would be more common for

[01:11] somebody to be really good at. And St. Paul, unfortunately, wasn't the greatest orator out there, but he converted more people to the Gospel because of the fact, as he said, "I carry in my body the brand marks of Jesus Christ." St. Paul did not come with human power, but with God's strength working in him. And if you read the letters of St. Paul, you can see that that's a major theme that runs through everything that he writes, is that our Lord is using his weakness. As he said

[01:50] many times, God chooses the weak in order to make them strong so that His power will be shown through them so that no man can boast before God. And we also see how it's not just the words or the delivery of the preacher by which people are brought to a knowledge of Jesus Christ. That's an important component. Obviously, St. Paul said that faith comes through preaching. And if there's

[02:25] nobody to preach the word of God, then there is no faith. And again, we have to remember the context. St. Paul and the apostles were constantly going out to people who had never heard of Jesus Christ or the Gospel before. Yet here, you know, in our time, most people have heard of Jesus, the Gospel, even if they have a, you know, misunderstanding of it or that they've been, you know, taught at least the bare minimum. And they've heard the stories. It's become part of our culture.

[02:59] But at that time, St. Paul was going and breaking ground. He was the one with the other apostles that were going out into this world of, I guess you could say, darkness that was there before the word of Jesus Christ and the light of the Gospel. So it was a little bit different in that context. But the principle still remains the same, that it's not just the preaching, but it's also

[03:32] the dispositions of the people. So when we're reading the word of God or listening to the word of God, you know, we don't always know where we're at, our dispositions, but we can always ask our Lord to increase that within us. And we see the result, like St. Paul said, that, you know, even if I preach with the tongues of angels, but do not, you know, have love, I'm just a clanging cymbal, just a noisy gong. In other words, there's no power behind it because it's not being carried

[04:08] by the Spirit of Jesus Christ, the Holy Spirit. It is sometimes preached in pride rather than the wisdom of God. And then we see that example, Jesus of Nazareth, you know, He's God. We don't have to worry about where He was at as far as proclaiming His own message. But you see here that the people of His own town did not accept His message. So their dispositions were not

[04:43] where they should have been. In fact, this is a little bit of a theophany, where Jesus shows His power subtly for those who have the eyes to see. Because when our Lord preached, they actually were intently looking at Him because they were thinking, and it's revealed further on, but they were expecting miracles from Him. They were expecting, they were looking, they were amazed at what He had said. And they were just waiting, you know, to see if He would work the

[05:18] same miracles among them as He had in all the other places that they heard of. And our Lord anticipates this, and He says that no prophet is accepted in His own native place. And then He corrects them and says that there are a lot of people at this time of that Elijah, Elisha, and none of our Lord or God did not heal or help these people, but He helped, you know,

[05:50] and He used the example of the different people that were helped, the widow, and then Naaman, the Syrian. And they were furious because He was correcting them as if they were not to be favored among everyone else. And they pushed Him to the brow of the hill that the town was built on. And I've seen the hill personally, and it's not just like this wide open space where,

[06:25] and then it drops off, it actually comes to, there's nowhere really to go if you're pushed right to where they say our Lord was pushed, like this point, this pinnacle of the hill. And our Lord, even though they were, it says here, this is how angry they were, that they were going to hurl Him down headlong off of this hill, just because they were angry at what He said. But our Lord passed through the midst of them and went away. It just calmly says

[06:58] that sometimes we miss that. Our Lord just walks through them because it was not His time. And He basically used His power to just go through them. One minute He's right in front of them, they're going to hurl Him over this cliff. And the next minute He's walking, walking away. So our Lord wants us to grow in our dispositions. So we should take this as

[07:30] also a correction of ourselves, that we all desire to know the truth, to know the message of God, to put it into practice in our lives. Yet sometimes we don't carry the best dispositions, and we have to examine ourselves, where is it that we could do better? And the important thing is to ask our Lord that we are attentive to His word when we read it, when we hear it read,

[08:02] and when it is spoken to us. And not just His word as far as words on a page, but also, as St. Francis said, the example of others. Let us take the example of the saints, because that's the living word, they're living icons of the life of Jesus, extended through time and history and geographically, time and space. So we should be attentive to the good examples that we see, be sensitive to that. And when we see a good example, let us not let it die

[08:38] in front of us, but let us carry it on and pay it forward and try to imitate the examples of the saints and those that we see around us. If we cultivate this habit, we cultivate these dispositions, then our Lord will be able to work miracles in our lives, that He will be able to work, especially moral miracles, in the lives of those who are dear to us and those who have left the path, those that need to come to awareness of the Gospel message. So let us not

[09:14] ever be, let's fill ourselves with the love of God, so that in both word and deed, we're never just clanging gongs or clashing cymbals, but that we always speak and act in the power and the love and the wisdom of Jesus Christ and Him crucified.