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How does your pastor sound? (Saturday 9th Week Ordinary Time 2020)
2 Timothy 4
Pastors are constantly tempted to please their flock. This happens not because they love to make their parishioners pleased and satisfied. It happens because they learn over time it is much easier than to be faithful to bring the true teaching of Christ. St Paul urges me: “proclaim the message; be persistent whether the time is favourable or unfavourable; convince, rebuke, and encourage, with the utmost patience in teaching.” St Paul knew how difficult teaching the Gospel was. And it demands courage and patience. If you have ever tried to convince, rebuke, and encourage one of your families or friends to walk the way of Christ, you would know what it is like. Many pastors become complaisant after much frustration. Jaded and disappointed, pastors seek their own comfort.
As St Paul had already gone through and foretold us, people refuse the sound teaching of the Church and seek those who would speak easy words to their ears. How accurate St Paul is to describe our times: “For the time is coming when people will not put up with sound doctrine, but having itching ears, they will accumulate for themselves teachers to suit their own desires, and will turn away from listening to the truth and wander away to myths.”
Since the last century, so much of the relaxation of disciplines settled in our faith life. But not only the disciplines but also the understanding of faith and moral has been much ‘modernized’. Was this a result of a search for Christ? Was this an outcome of a better understanding of the Gospel? Was this an effect of the spiritual renewal of Christian life?
St Paul admonishes me to be sober, to endure suffering, to do the work of an evangelist, and to carry out my ministry fully. He asks me a lot. Please pray for your pastors so that they may also be able to say like St Paul when they are close to their departure from this world: “As for me, I am already being poured out as a libation, and the time of my departure has come. I have fought the good fight, I have finished the race, I have kept the faith.”
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By Fr Swann Kim2 Timothy 4
Pastors are constantly tempted to please their flock. This happens not because they love to make their parishioners pleased and satisfied. It happens because they learn over time it is much easier than to be faithful to bring the true teaching of Christ. St Paul urges me: “proclaim the message; be persistent whether the time is favourable or unfavourable; convince, rebuke, and encourage, with the utmost patience in teaching.” St Paul knew how difficult teaching the Gospel was. And it demands courage and patience. If you have ever tried to convince, rebuke, and encourage one of your families or friends to walk the way of Christ, you would know what it is like. Many pastors become complaisant after much frustration. Jaded and disappointed, pastors seek their own comfort.
As St Paul had already gone through and foretold us, people refuse the sound teaching of the Church and seek those who would speak easy words to their ears. How accurate St Paul is to describe our times: “For the time is coming when people will not put up with sound doctrine, but having itching ears, they will accumulate for themselves teachers to suit their own desires, and will turn away from listening to the truth and wander away to myths.”
Since the last century, so much of the relaxation of disciplines settled in our faith life. But not only the disciplines but also the understanding of faith and moral has been much ‘modernized’. Was this a result of a search for Christ? Was this an outcome of a better understanding of the Gospel? Was this an effect of the spiritual renewal of Christian life?
St Paul admonishes me to be sober, to endure suffering, to do the work of an evangelist, and to carry out my ministry fully. He asks me a lot. Please pray for your pastors so that they may also be able to say like St Paul when they are close to their departure from this world: “As for me, I am already being poured out as a libation, and the time of my departure has come. I have fought the good fight, I have finished the race, I have kept the faith.”