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| St. Lawrence of Brindisi, Priest and Doctor |
Preaching
is an
Apostolic Duty
From a sermon by
Saint Lawrence of Brindisi, priest
1559 - 1619
Feast Day July 21
Feast Day July 21
There is a spiritual life that we share with the angels of
heaven and with the divine spirits, for like them we have been formed in the
image and likeness of God. The bread
that is necessary for living this life is the grace of the Holy Spirit and the
love of God. But grace and love are
nothing without faith, since without faith is impossible to please God. And faith is not conceived unless the word of
God is preached.
Faith comes from hearing,
and what is heard is the word of Christ.
The preaching of the word of God, then, is
necessary for the spiritual life, just as the planting of seed is necessary for
bodily life.
Christ says: The sower
went out to so his seed. The sower
goes out as a herald of justice. On some
occasions we read that the herald was God, for example, when with the living
voice from heaven he gave the law of justice to a whole people in the
desert.
On other occasions, the herald was an angel of the Lord, as when
he accused the people of transgressing the divine law at Bochim, in the place
of weeping. At this all the sons of Israel,
when they heard the angel’s address, became sorrowful in their hearts, lifted
up their voices, and wept bitterly. Then
again, Moses preached the law of the Lord to the whole people on the plains of
Moab, as we read in Deuteronomy.
Finally, Christ came as God and man to preach the word of the Lord, and
for the same purpose he sent the apostles, just as he had sent the prophets
before them.
Preaching, therefore, is a duty that is apostolic, angelic,
Christian, divine. The word of God is
replete with manifold blessings, since it is, so to speak, a treasure of all
goods. It is the source of faith, hope,
charity, all virtues, all the gifts of the Holy Spirit, all the beatitudes of
the Gospel, all good works, all the rewards of life, all the glory of paradise:
Welcome the word that has taken root in
you,
with its power to save you.
For the word of God is a light to the mind and a fire to the
will. It enables man to know God and to
love him. And for the interior man who
lives by the Spirit of God through grace, it is bread and water, but a bread
sweeter than honey and the honeycomb, a water better than wine and milk.
For the soul it is a spiritual treasure of
merits
yielding as abundance of gold and precious stones.
Against the hardness of a heart that
persists
in wrongdoing,
it acts as a hammer.
Against the world,
the flesh and the devil
it serves as a sword that
destroys all sin.
Homily About Saint Lawrence Of Brindisi By Father Elias,
Franciscan
Detailed Life of the Saint see this website
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