Preaching the truth leads to salvation and salvation comes to us through the Sacraments, because the Sacraments are intimate encounters with Jesus Christ the Living God, the One who heals and the One who saves-they are real encounters with the very power and love of God Himself.

Mark 1; 29-39 Fifth Sunday in Ordinary Time. February 8th, 2015

In today’s second reading we hear St Paul speak of his grave obligation to preach the Gospel to the People of God. This Gospel is the Truth that Jesus Christ gave to the twelve apostles, and to St. Paul as well. St Paul humbly admits that his charge, to preach the teachings of Christ--the teachings and doctrines of the Church, is not something that He boasts about, because it is an obligation placed on Him by Christ Himself. And so, St. Paul rightly realizes that He must give the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth or woe to him if he does not do so.

In the Gospels, Jesus himself tells us that his own mission is to preach, to spread the Good News. Jesus’ Father actually sent Him for this very purpose, to give testimony to the truth, the truth about God and about the truth about man. Jesus then picked the twelve apostles, the first priests and bishops, to take what they learned from Jesus’ preaching and turn around and preach it to others.
The twelve were commissioned to make the truth about God and man known to the whole world through their preaching…Go forth and preach the Good News…Whoever listens to you listens to me.

It’s clear that preaching is the very method selected by God to bring about the salvation He desired for man. So the apostles obviously took very seriously the duty to give the truth their people needed, even if the people did not always want to hear it; and many times, sadly, they didn’t want to hear it. Elsewhere in the scriptures, St. Paul says to Timothy, who himself was a priest and later a bishop, “Preach the word, be urgent in season and out of season, convince, rebuke, and exhort, be unfailing in patience and teaching.”

St. Paul knew that an authentic and living faith comes only from hearing the truth. And so Paul
tells his protégé, Timothy, that preaching is not about making people feel good or for entertainment, but to convince the people of the truth and necessities of the teachings of the Church for their eternal salvation; preaching the truth is for rebuking them by telling them about the reality of sin and the need for every one of them to repent because sin (that is not living the truth), keeps them from fully experiencing God and His love and mercy; and preaching exists to exhort the people to amend their lives, to do better and to live more and more fully according to the truth; and so, according to the teachings of the Church (which are the greatest certainty of truth there is in this world, because they come from mouth of Truth Himself-Jesus).

By accepting the truth that they have received by preaching, and living according to the truth with the help of grace, the faithful themselves then preach the Gospel; they preach the truth to world by their lives. By doing so, they lead others to turn away from sin and unhappiness and turn to back to the God who loves them. This is why they Church identifies preaching the Gospel as one of the main tasks of Bishops and priests. St. Pope Pius X went so far as saying that “for a priest there is no duty more grave, or obligation more binding than preaching the truth as found in the teachings of the Church and to do so in order to dispel ignorance and lies.” Vatican II reiterated this duty by saying that “the People of God is formed into God’s true family by the Word of the living God which is given to them and sought by them from the mouth of priests.”

The truth matters for eternal salvation. Nobody can be saved unless they first believe and nobody can believe unless they first hear the truth and hear it in its purity and fullness. So the first task of the priest is to preach the truth unadulterated and in its fullness to all men. And so not only is the priest gravely sinning if he does not preach the teachings of the Church fully and correctly and make them shine, he also is not showing love to his people-a priest who does not preach the truth does not truly love his people, no matter how nice he may be--Period.
The priest’s preaching should always imitate Jesus’ preaching but remember Jesus preaching was not just limited to words. In other words, Jesus’ life bore witness to the truth of His words. And so, the priest too must live what He preaches. His life to must bear witness to the truth of what he preaches. How much more is expected by God of his priests.

Another point. The words and preaching of Jesus were also attested to by His mighty deeds, which brought healing and salvation to the people He touched, if they were open, like the woman in our Gospel today. All of the encounters in the Gospels with the Person of Jesus, brought more than just the experience of mighty works, they were more importantly real, intimate encounters with the Living God, with the True and Living God that these people found in the very Person of Jesus Christ. We might not have thought about this, but it is the Truth that Heals…

This is the real goal of all preaching. Preaching is meant to convince, rebuke and exhort us to the truth, but only in order to draw us into the same healing encounter with Jesus as the woman sick with a fever had and those others had who were ill or possessed by demons. The fact is, is that we are all in need of healing. There doesn’t have to be disease or systemic evil in our lives for us to have a great need of the healing power of Christ. Our need for the touch of Jesus in our lives can be from the burdens of our sins, from the lies and the untruths that have been thrust upon us or just from the burdens of every day.

But where, where do we today experience this healing and saving encounter with Jesus? Again, good preaching from the priest gives us, leads us to the true answer! We encounter Jesus in the Sacraments of the Church, especially the renewal of the sacrifice of Calvary--the Holy Mass!!!

It is in the Sacraments of the Church that Jesus continues to carry out mighty works in and through the Person of the Priest, and so testify to the truth. In the Sacraments Jesus continues to touch in order to heal and so save those who believe, those with faith…”your faith has saved you, healed you.” And at Holy Mass, there we hear not only Jesus powerful words of salvation, the truth of His Holy Word, but we, through faith, can literally and personally encounter God in the flesh, the Truth in the flesh, and experience the power of His healing touch in the Holy Eucharist.

The Sacraments actually effect or carry out the saving words of Jesus. In the Sacraments it Jesus Himself who reaches out in order to touch our feverish bodies, cooling them and calming them, if we but have faith. In the Sacraments it is Jesus Himself who releases us from the power of satan; it is Jesus who releases us from the burdens of our sins, from the poison of lies; and it is Jesus Himself who helps us to carry the heavy burdens of life…It is in the Sacraments that Jesus, He who is the Way, the Truth, and the Life, saves us through healing us.

The longer I am a priest the more I see the incredible awesome power of God in the Sacraments, the Sacraments that I, as a priest, have been given the great privilege of administering to souls. I have seen their awesome power not only to heal and to save. But to do so, by bringing souls who believe, who have faith, into an incredible mysterious but very real encounter with Jesus the Son of the Living God. If us Catholics would really come to understand and truly believe in the power that is available to us in the Sacraments, power that enables us to live the truth in our lives, we could change the face of our world overnight…for our lives would be living proclamations of the Gospel, of the truth.

Let us daily pray for all priests that they may always have the courage to preach the truth of the Gospel in all of its fullness not only in their words, but with their lives as well. Let us pray that they imitate the Master Preacher Jesus Christ and preach the truth even if they are rejected as He, even if they are lead to Calvary as He. O Lord give them the strength no to succumb to the great pressures in our day to water down the truth so as not to upset things; give them the grace to, as Pope Francis said, “stir things up.” Preaching the truth leads to salvation and salvation comes to us through the Sacraments, because the Sacraments are intimate encounters with Jesus Christ the Living God, the One who heals and the One who saves-they are real encounters with the very power and love of God Himself.

And may we who have had the Gospel of Jesus Christ preached to us harden not our hearts but open them to the truth that heals, to Jesus who is the source of all truth, who is Truth Itself. With a deeper faith, let us go to Sacraments in order to be healed more fully by Jesus. Let us go especially to the Holy Eucharist in order to be touched by the Human Hand of God truly present there and so be healed. May we then lead others as well to Jesus healing touch in the Sacraments by preaching to them the truth of the Gospel with our lives.