A tension within me - Feb 11, 2012

It’s Tuesday morning and a deadline to get this Pondering finished is looming. In a half hour I will be in church preparing for a funeral. So, as always, I’m preparing. There is always a tension within me when I preach. You would think after 36 years this angst would lessen. Yet, as I think, this doubt and tension is a good thing. It means I am aware of my own limits and the need I have for God’s grace. So as I pray may my words today be God’s words. May my words communicate to someone the compassion and awesomeness of God. The following is a reflection of Karl Rahner on the priesthood. He says things more eloquently than I.

“The priest is not an angel sent from heaven. He is a man chosen from among men, a member of the Church, a Christian. Remaining man and Christian, he begins to speak to you the Word of God. This word is not his own. No, he comes to you because God has told him to proclaim His Word. Perhaps he adulterates it. Perhaps he filters and stammers. Accept him as the messenger of Christ. Let your hearts and minds swell with the grace of God so as to hear in his human words -- in his humbling, miserable, colorless and often repetitious words, – the holy, blessed and powerful Word of God, the Word that brings God Himself and His eternal life into our midst. Pray for him. Carry him so that he may sustain others by bringing to them the majesty of God’s love revealed in Christ Jesus.”

Fr. Bob Hawkins