310. Sixteenth Thursday of Ordinary Time
Meditations no. 288 (unofficial computer-aided translation)
Doctrinal apostolate. The āgift of tonguesā.
Blessed are your eyes, for they see, and your ears, for they hear. Truly, I say to you, many prophets and righteous men longed to see what you see, and did not see it, and to hear what you hear, and did not hear it. Even in profound matters Jesus expresses himself in very simple ways; he is able to communicate with everybody. Jesus respects peopleās mentality and background. The fishermen get examples of nets and fishes; the farmers, of seed and vines; the housewives, of lost coins; the Samaritan woman, of the very water she came to Jacobās well to draw.
No one goes away disappointed: they all receive the message in their own way. Jesusā word, the Good News, was for everyone, and people gradually came to understand its implications. As the day drew to a close they even had to be sent home, so easy was he to listen to.
Christ has given those words of eternal life to us. We know that Godās worst enemy on earth is ignorance; and as one of the Popes has written, it is the cause and root of all the evils poisoning peoples and distressing souls. That is why we ardently desire to lead all souls to the truth of Christ himself. How can people love him without knowing him? No one loves what he does not know. This means adapting ourselves to different mentalities and backgrounds, not assuming that people are all on the same wavelength.
And so we need the gift of tongues, which means knowing how to transmit the knowledge of God - an essential requisite for whoever is to be an apostle. That is why I ask God our Lord each day to grant it to every one of his sons and daughters.
Teaching something implies placing it within peopleās reach. In your sowing, my children, be clear and unambiguous. We cannot permit a practical scepticism to take hold: the truth is one. The gift of tongues, as I like to call it, joyfully recalling the coming of the Spirit, adapts itself to the capacity and formation of the person listening, and is a fruit of your own preparation of the material, and of the love and faith you bring to this apostolic work.
This ability to match doctrine to mentality is so important in the apostolate that our Founder asked God to grant his daughters and sons the gift of tongues, so that what we say will be clear to everyone.
Repeating the same ideas over and over again.
Preach the word, be urgent in season and out of season, convince, rebuke, and exhort, be unfailing in patience and in teaching. Addressing people āin their own languageā is certainly a start, but in doctrinal apostolate we also need to say the same things over and over again, firstly because what we say may not be properly grasped in a single hearing, and secondly because it may not be retained.
Fearless repetition is the norm. In my experience one has to go back over things. Ideas may be perfectly clear but still not get across, either because we are not so good at explaining them or because the audience is not so good at understanding them - or perhaps even both.
This means being ready to dress ideas up in fifty different ways if necessary. Eventually they hit home. At first only three people get the point, then ten, and finally thirty. Some will never understand: all they get is what the man in the story got from a sermon in a foreign language: cold feet and a headache.
We must be prepared to go back over things again and again, with the same calm and enthusiasm. Teaching doctrine is, after all, one of the ruling passions of Godās children in Opus Dei. A word in season, how good it is! This quotation from the Book of Proverbs is a good reminder to us to seize every opportunity of sowing good doctrine.
It is essential to be patient, if we are not to get discouraged by our own incompetence or othersā sluggishness. We ourselves are also called to destroy many idols, not by doing anything spectacular but by living with the naturalness of an ordinary Christian, sowing peace and joy around us. In this way we will topple the idols of misunderstanding, of injustice, of ignorance, and of those who claim to be self-sufficient and arrogantly turn their backs on God.
If I preach the Gospel, that gives me no ground for boasting. For necessity is laid upon me. Woe to me if I do not preach the Gospel! St Paulās attitude is very much our own. We should remember what St Pius the Tenth said: doctrine has to be imparted with all possible commitment, enthusiasm and persistence, and a concern for religious knowledge to inspire the hearts and minds of all.
A fresh approach: the same thing, in different ways.
Since doctrinal subjects often have to be repeated, we should make a special effort to present them attractively, so that people donāt get bored with hearing them again and again.
We say the same things, but in different ways. Faith and morals obviously remain the same, but our style can be fresh and varied. The same ideas, in a hundred different languages, pleasantly, so that our speech may always be gracious, seasoned with salt, so that you may know how you ought to answer everyone.
Unless you season ideas with the grace and salt of pleasant conversation, St John Chrysostom says, you will achieve nothing. This means that the same point should always sound new. We need ā¦ to be able to say the same thing every day with new attractiveness. It is the gift of tongues, part of the gift of tongues. We will achieve this by study, not by improvising or relying on extraordinary āinspirationsā. So, as well as asking for the gift of tongues, we ought also to be on the look-out for novel turns of phrase and thought. Reading our Fatherās works will also help, because he had the knack of putting things across in a fresh and lively way.
We also ask our Lady, Queen of Apostles, to enrich our apostolic dialogue with the gift of tongues, and the ability to clothe our ideas in words that are forever fresh and varied.