Vigils Reading

ON PREACHING CHRIST

By St Albert the Great

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Just as the body is borne about on legs, so Christ is borne about by

preachers. Professional preachers have the gospel in their heart through love and

understanding, in their lips through their preaching and doctrine, and in their

hand through the accomplishment of their work.

Gregory says: “The preacher’s tongue works to no avail unless there is the

grace of redemption at work within.” Hence, the office of preaching must not be

entrusted to those who lead a shady life and perform works of darkness. The

preacher must put off the old association with sin. The word of the Lord must

proceed maturely and orderly, as befits the word of God and as it proceeds from

the mouth of God.

Thus preaching requires instruction, and study, and meditation. Just as

the eagle has a more sublime flight, so must the preacher soar by means of

contemplation. For a sermon which proceeds from a preacher’s innermost being

warms and gladdens the heart like wine and is often brought back to the mind

and pondered.

The things to be preached are those above nature which our intelligence

can only understand through faith. Especially to be preached are those things

that must be believed, which works are to be avoided and which to be

accomplished. Preaching should summon sinners to repentance, strengthen the

weak, warn of the punishment for sinners, and promise glory. Preachers must

offer not their own teaching of truth but the teaching of the one who sent them.

They must lead an exemplary life as well.

Preachers who are sent, going out from their comfort into the field to sow

the word of God, will find the Church of believers to be united with themselves in

a spiritual marriage. Just as the sight of open fields will impel a horse to run,

which is one of its skills, so the sight of a place filled with people eager to listen

will inspire a preacher to preach. Preachers will thus proceed to insure their own

spiritual growth, that by contemplating they might imbibe the truth which by

preaching they give forth; they are converted from an external work, which they

directed toward their neighbor, to familiar conversation with God in the secret of

their own conscience.

The scribe is the Holy Spirit, and the preacher’s tongue is the pen by which

the Holy Spirit speaks. And just as we do not praise the pen for fine writing but

rather the writer, so the preacher should not be praised for good preaching but

the Holy Spirit.

The word of God is to be preached to everyone without respect to persons.

It must be taught in a human way and inserted into the human heart by the finger

of God. It should be taught to the unlearned by the examples of corporal things

through the bodily examples with which they are acquainted and by which they

can in some way understand heavenly things.