Daily Retreat 05/20/09
2009 May 20 Wed:Easter Weekday/ Bernardine of Siena, p, r, ms
Acts 17:15. 22 -- 18:1/ Ps 148:1-2. 11-12. 13. 14/ Jn 16:12-15
From today’s readings: “God has overlooked the times of ignorance, but now He demands that all people everywhere repent.... Praise the name of the LORD, for His name alone is exalted; His majesty is above Earth and Heaven.... When He comes, the Spirit of truth, He will guide you to all truth!”
Polished Paul
Read all of chapter 17 of the Acts to get the full effect of Paul’s most polished sermon - his speech at the Areopagus in Athens. Although many today would be turned off by this very formal style, it certainly was the perfect pitch for the intelligentsia of Athens who congregated just for the stimulation of new philosophical ideas. Paul must have stayed up all night, painstakingly brooding over audience analysis, and enthusiastically practicing on his delivery, spicing it up with local allusions, figuring out the best hook to catch the polytheistic Athenians’ interest, then determining how he’d smoothly lead them to an awareness of the one true God.
And yet, Paul’s effort was in vain, for the speech was a failure! True, a bit of interest was stirred up, but most of the Athenians just scoffed at the very notion of Christ’s Resurrection from the dead. Consequently, Paul did not tarry long at all in Athens, and there was no prodigious growth of the Church in that city.
Although some, particularly Pope Benedict XVI, have pointed to the positive pioneering and diplomatic aspects of Paul’s speech on the Areopagus as an inspirational precedent for the Church’s dialogue with modernity, others, such as Bishop Fulton Sheen, have focused more on the lesson to be drawn from Paul’s failure. All of Paul’s other sermons are unabashedly Christ-centered, but at the Areopagus, Paul’s strategy was to start with common ground, catering to the Athenian fascination with philosophy, but thereby diluting somewhat the compelling package of the full gospel presentation of the life and love of the Lord as revealed in His incarnation, passion, death, and resurrection.
Both insights are crucial: Christians certainly have the vocation of proclaiming Christ to all the world, and ingenuity and inculturation are to be fostered in the work of evangelization. On the other hand, Christianity cannot ever be reduced to a vehicle for secular humanism, and the gospel cannot ever be compromised to accommodate modern mindsets.
Acts 17:15. 22 -- 18:1/ Ps 148:1-2. 11-12. 13. 14/ Jn 16:12-15
From today’s readings: “God has overlooked the times of ignorance, but now He demands that all people everywhere repent.... Praise the name of the LORD, for His name alone is exalted; His majesty is above Earth and Heaven.... When He comes, the Spirit of truth, He will guide you to all truth!”
Polished Paul
Read all of chapter 17 of the Acts to get the full effect of Paul’s most polished sermon - his speech at the Areopagus in Athens. Although many today would be turned off by this very formal style, it certainly was the perfect pitch for the intelligentsia of Athens who congregated just for the stimulation of new philosophical ideas. Paul must have stayed up all night, painstakingly brooding over audience analysis, and enthusiastically practicing on his delivery, spicing it up with local allusions, figuring out the best hook to catch the polytheistic Athenians’ interest, then determining how he’d smoothly lead them to an awareness of the one true God.
And yet, Paul’s effort was in vain, for the speech was a failure! True, a bit of interest was stirred up, but most of the Athenians just scoffed at the very notion of Christ’s Resurrection from the dead. Consequently, Paul did not tarry long at all in Athens, and there was no prodigious growth of the Church in that city.
Although some, particularly Pope Benedict XVI, have pointed to the positive pioneering and diplomatic aspects of Paul’s speech on the Areopagus as an inspirational precedent for the Church’s dialogue with modernity, others, such as Bishop Fulton Sheen, have focused more on the lesson to be drawn from Paul’s failure. All of Paul’s other sermons are unabashedly Christ-centered, but at the Areopagus, Paul’s strategy was to start with common ground, catering to the Athenian fascination with philosophy, but thereby diluting somewhat the compelling package of the full gospel presentation of the life and love of the Lord as revealed in His incarnation, passion, death, and resurrection.
Both insights are crucial: Christians certainly have the vocation of proclaiming Christ to all the world, and ingenuity and inculturation are to be fostered in the work of evangelization. On the other hand, Christianity cannot ever be reduced to a vehicle for secular humanism, and the gospel cannot ever be compromised to accommodate modern mindsets.
posted by FrPitstick | 5/16/2009
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