Fr. Timothy Radcliffe, O.P.: "Preaching: Conversation in Friendship"

I'd like to introduce to you sister Mary Katherine Hill curt professor of theology here at the university of notre dame one of our most distinguished faculty members someone who's well known to those of us in the homiletic community particularly for her book naming grace she is a Dominican sister of peace you will notice there are a number of Dominicans on the program and with us these days they're up to something they're having some sort of meetings we're delighted that they are here and Kathy will introduce our keynote speaker thanks Mike it's really a particular joy to be able to introduce my Dominican brother and friend Timothy Radcliffe this evening when Pope Francis described the preacher as one who has a great personal familiarity with the Word of God and the preachers task as the wonderful but difficult task of joining loving hearts the heart of the Lord and the heart of the people among whom we preach he might have been describing the life and ministry of Timothy Radcliffe Timothy as you know was master of the order of preachers from 1992 to 2001 and since that time he's returned to full-time itinerant preaching and teaching and to his home community in Oxford Timothy was an obvious choice not just for the dominican member of the community of the committee when we talked about a conference for preaching to all the world since he has spent his life doing just that at least his life as a dominican if you're interested in his unconventional faith journey before that time in which he describes himself as no pious boy one of those who used to climb over the wall at the boarding school to go to the pub to smoke and drink or who was nearly expelled after being caught reading Lady Chatterley's Lover during benediction all the while convinced of his profound belief in God and that his faith must be central to his life if you're interested in all that you can read about it in more detail in the interview that's published in his book I call you friends but after that young man discovered how in who I was called to be a preacher he spent his life doing what Dominic himself did speaking to God and of God and as Dominic did Eden with an elbow jinseyun innkeeper in the thirteenth century Timothy is known for staying up late into the night listening to the questions of the other taking their concerns to heart and sharing his own faith hope and questions before he was elected provincial of the English province of dominicans and later master of the order Timothy taught scripture at Blackfriars College of Oxford where he was at the same time actively involved in preaching and social justice ministries when he received that university's highest honorary degree the Doctor of Divinity in 2003 the Chancellor said among other things I present a man distinguished both for his eloquence and for his wit a master theologian who has never disregarded ordinary people a practical man who believes that religion and the teachings of theology must be constantly applied to the conduct of public life Timothy is perhaps most well known for the way in which he befriends others genuinely listens and attends to them especially to those with whom he disagrees in the order he's frequently quoted with his famous line can we chat his pastoral concern is reflected in the titles of his most widely read books texts that touched the minds of and hearts of many students on this campus and throughout the country sing a new song the Christian vocation or I call you friends his book on the seven last words his books the question what is the point of being a Christian why go to church why go to church the drama of the Eucharist and most recently taking the plunge Living Baptism and Confirmation when asked by that same interviewer about what has sustained him in his preaching vocation over the years Timothy said what helped me was I fell in love with study I discovered that I passionately loved studying the Word of God that combined with friendship enabled me to survive and more than merely survive I knew I couldn't be happier doing anything else we're grateful to you Timothy for accepting our invitation and we look forward to your reflections on preaching as conversation and friendship okay good evening thank you for the the warm welcome you know that we say in England if they applaud you at the beginning it's a sign of faith if they applaud - you're halfway through it's a sign of hope if they applaud you at the end it's probably a sign of charity I'm very happy to be back here in LA today I had a wonderful time here 18 months ago and I remember learning that when G K Chesterton came here he was very nervous it was the time of prohibition and for all full time he thought that he would have nothing to drink but he found that every professor was brewing beer in the basement and the professor of classics made the best beer and it wonderful this tradition of hospitality has continued today if I think it was Kathy who was even suggesting but rather again at the lecture we should go out to the pub instead it's also wonderful to come back to a group as I look around you I see so many people that I know 70 people have been friends at various times in my life so many brothers and sisters who've taught me so much I'll just mention Kathy herself who has taught so much of the order how to preach and of course our beloved Gustavo Gutierrez we are all your pupils Gustavo so thank you so we're here to think about the New Evangelization I'm not quite sure what's new about it Anthony Trollope 19th century English novelist he said there is perhaps no greater hardship at present inflicted on humanity and civilized and free countries than a necessity of listening to sermons even for committed Christians I think having to listen to preachers can be exquisite torture as a friend of mine who's a brilliant teacher lives in Dublin and he says the precisely three minutes after he begins to preach a large and threatening man always stands up and look points at his watch I expect you'll do the same thing in a couple of in its time but whatever way we preach whether it's a sermon or whether it's on blogs or tweets or articles or or web pages we have to break through a stiff barrier of indifference I think this is probably even more the case in Europe that it is in the States which remains a a deeply religious country but even here in the United States there are a growing number of people who declare themselves uninterested in religion or opposed to it in Europe you see these great banners outside the churches often which say you know repent and believe in the gospel God loves you he sent His only Son to redeem you well I think that these really mean nothing to anybody unless you already believe they don't they don't touch the imagination though I did always enjoy the one which said which he rather watch with the wise virgins or sleep with the foolish ones I think that's really the the challenge of evangelization and I think the most beautiful story about how to do it occurs Rama obviously I'm afraid in the journey to mass of these disciples perhaps - perhaps more walking to mass with this mysterious stranger blind to him and there are two things that change them first of all there is the toy didn't our hearts burn within us as he talked to us on the road and secondly there is the gesture of breaking the bread and sharing it and I want to start with the joy and eventually lead us to the gesture you see the curious thing is that they experience of joy even before they know why somehow the hearts burn even when they have no idea who this guy is and they're going in the wrong direction but Jesus doesn't block them he doesn't stand in the road and say stop you should be going back to Jerusalem he walks with them even when they're going away from the price of Revelation he shares their mistake and journey but it's the joy that prepares them for the gospel as it's the joy of John the Baptist who leaps in the womb of his mother even before he can speak even before he too can see the face of Jesus this joy is a sort of pre evangelization now it's not a terrible hearty back-slapping jollity you know smile but jesus loves you personally I find nothing more depressing so what is this joy in the Catechism this Reuben Rudi bus San Agustin said that the teacher should communicate his faith with hilarious and that's usually translated as cheerfulness you know as if you should crack a few jokes to keep the people awake I'm nothing against that I do it myself not always successfully but hilarious for Agustin means much more than that it's a sort of exuberance it's an ecstasy it's being taken out of yourself hilarious is an experience of grace it liberates you from soft preoccupation it's that first encounter with the good with the Lord and it anticipates our ultimate destiny which is the joy of God so begins in this particular joy and it ends in the silent joy of beholding God I was very influenced by a Sri Lankan Dominican when I was a student who was called Cornelius asked extraordinary man his father was Anglican his mother was Buddhist and he said that grace is the experience of what he calls the genetic moment every genetic moment is mystery his dorm discovery spring new birth coming to the light awakening transcendence liberation ecstasy Bridal consent gift forgiveness reconciliation revolution faith hope and love he said it could be said that Christianity is the consecration of the generic moment behold I make all things new and this hilarious this joy which is the beginning of all the naturalization is a sort of experience of the generic moment the abiding novelty of God and the disciples experience this burning of the heart in conversation with Jesus and conversation is the typical mode of Christian evangelization San Augustine was the greatest preacher certainly there ever was in the West and if you read his sermons you see that Augustine he probes people he questions them he argues with them sometimes he sucks every conversation of Augustine is a dialogue with his people so his sermons take off a preacher and the people ignite each other up we rub each other up the right way so that one set alight by the faith of the congregation who help one to believe as a preacher it doesn't always work I think of one of my English presently was called Vincent McNabb in the 1920s when he was preaching at speakers corner in Hyde Park and he had this long argument with a very vociferous woman in the front row of the crowd and finally she said to him Oh father Vincent if I was married you I poison you to which he replied madam if I was married to you I'd take it evangelization is not communicating information it's a happening it's the happening of grace in which we participate in the happening of redemption the pregnancy of Mary that new day on Easter Sunday and nothing will happen unless it's rooted in conversation in the Torah of debate in exchange in which we speak and we listen so that's the first question why is conversation at the heart of all evangelization first of all because no communication is properly Christian which does not respect the freedom the independence of the person that you're speaking to as your interlocutor unless you're open to what they have to say that it can't be a Christian conversation James Allison wrote about what he calls Nuremberg worship in which the community is reduced to a mob in which people lose their independence and their individuality he said you bring people together you unite them in worship you provide regular rhythmic music and marching you enable them to see lots of people in uniforms people have already lost a certain individuality and become symbols you give them songs to sing and all the serfs take people out of themselves that normally restrain become passionate unfriendly neighbors find themselves looking at each other and in the light of the growing Brutus shaft they get swallowed up into the mob and every mob can become a lynch mob a Palm Sunday they begin by shouting hosannas now they end by saying crucify him and secondly evangelization is always conversation because Revelation is God's conversation with his people in verbum Dei by Benedict wrote the novelty of biblical revelation consists in the fact that God becomes known through the dialogue which He desires to have with us the life of God is the eternal conversation of the Father and the Son and the Spirit a revelation is God's invitation to us to be part of that conversation Herbert McCabe compares it to the jolt of the wonderful joy of a dublin pub benedict again the word who from the beginning is with God and is God reveals himself in the dialogue of love between the divine persons and invites us to share in that love so revelation isn't about receiving obscure messages from heaven you're not shining in with our radio stations it's about taking part in a conversation that transforms us and transforms us into friends now any good conversation demands two things which are necessarily intentional and it's the tension which is at the heart of evangelization you have to have something to say you have to have something to learn if you've nothing to say then the conversations going to be vacuous and if you've not a learn it's going to be a monologue evangelization happens when these are in a right dynamic relationship so Jesus listens to the disciples on the way to Emmaus and then he teaches them so we Christians have a teaching to give Jesus title above always rabbi teacher Jesus commands the disciples at the end to go and to teach everything that he's learned from them our society and maybe again I don't know maybe I speak really more of Europe but our society is resistant to doctrine because it is a doctrine of the Enlightenment that doctrine is infantile it suppresses freedom of thought you could say there is a dogmatic rejection of doctrine but of CK Chesterton once remarked there are only two kinds of people those who accept dogmas and note those who accept dogmas and dint note trees have no dogmas and turnips are singularly broad-minded this prejudice against teaching are so saturated our culture that it's shared by many Christians spirituality we often read is more acceptable it's thought to be less oppressive it's liberating it gives you calm it's personal it's the very object opposite of Catholic doctrine but I want to say and I hope this entirely crazy that there can be no powerful evangelization unless we recover a sense of the mind-blowing beauty of doctrine take for example the doctrine of the Trinity from many Catholics it's just obscure celestial mathematics which is absolutely nothing to do with the ordinary challenges of living but I don't think that we have a hope in hell of sharing our faith unless we rediscover the dizzy excitement the intellectual liberation of leaving believing in the divinity of Christ in the Trinity Gregory of Nyssa famously wrote in the fourth century if in this city of Constantinople you ask anyone for change we will discuss you whether the son of man is begotten or unbegotten if you ask about the quality of bread you will receive the answer the father is greater the son is less if you suggest that a bath is desirable you'll be told there is nothing before the Sun was created I mean just this happen to you in Walmarts does it happen to you in your communities I have occasionally suggested to one or two president that a bath is desirable but they've never said there's nothing before the Sun was created Christianity is an intellectually demanding teaching it makes you think it pushes you beyond any easy answers in fact it pushes you beyond any answers at all Vincent McNabb or I mentioned a moment ago used to say to our novices in the nineteen twenties think think of anything but for God's sake think Brown Davis is one of our brethren who Dominican who teaches at Fordham University and he was sitting in a bus in London and he heard two women talking in front of him and one of them was gang all about her all her troubles and her difficulties and the other said well my dear you must be philosophical and the first one said but what is philosophical mean she replied it means don't think I think our society has largely lost confidence in reasoning which is one reason why we're afraid of doctrine because we don't know how to engage with it rationally but Christianity without doctrine would be like steak and kidney pudding without any steak was a character said in Pride and Prejudice it would be like a bull without any dancing and which will only have anything to say to our contemporaries in this conversation if we refuse to dumb down we have 2,000 years of rigorous thinking and praying about the deepest questions we have to be loyal to the complexity of things I was sitting beside a allayed chaplain in a Northern University in England the other day and we were talking about the Bishop Bishop of England and Wales I made a statement on gay marriage and she said oh they reduce it just to reproduction and I said well that's not actually true you know it's a it's a nuanced complex document she said I don't do news truth and justice demand norms I can't help telling you about a story about our brother Herbert against when Herbert was about six years old he did something very bad and his mother said to him John that was his baptismal name John this is so bad that it may even be a mortal sin a little Herber replied mother according to the teaching of the Catholic Church I cannot commit a mortal sin until I attend the age of reason this I have not done at the age of six your reasoning is there for faulty doctrine keeps alive the drama of Christian life what Chesterton calls the adventure of Orthodoxy and a young will not in the long term be drawn to a religion which is an innocuous spirituality you know light a candle feel good about yourself and find where you are on the inia ground but if we share with them the challenge of being a Christian which can involve giving up everything and following Christ they may run away in terror but they may just find that the adventure that they've longed for you know in the plane while I was coming over here I saw for the first time a TV program called Game of Thrones the Game of Thrones it's the rage in England everybody is watching the gain of France so I watched it all part of my preparation for this lecture and it was love a city but you could see there was a drama of love and death as people want they thirst for and if we can present the drama that Christianity is there might be a chance they prefer it to the game of Thrones well I was 9 you know my little Benedictine prep school which is what we call the school for little kids iced have this dream that the Russians would parachute out of the skies and surround the school and I say who is willing to die for the faith and young Radcliffe with hold of his hands and die in a shower of bullets painlessly of course and universally admired which was the main point of it have you ever seen this extraordinary film I talked about it when I was lost after Dame of gods and men how many of you seen it great fantastic a large number of you you know tells the story of this small community of Trappist monks call it a rising tide of violence between on the one hand the Islamist terrorists and on the other hand the brutal Algerian army and they have to decide whether to stay or to go and the youngest monk Christophsis up on stage he says but I didn't become a monk to die and the prior says but you've already given your life away and finally they realize that they have no option but to stay along 21st of May people came in the light and took them all away bar - and a few days later their heads were found in plastic bags hanging under the eucalyptus trees just under the monastery I was there in January well I saw this film in Oxford nobody wanted to leave the cinema at the end nobody wanted to go everybody wanted to wait for the last credits who did the hair who is the best boy how often does this happen with our servants people hanging on Dorothy sayers said Dogma is the drama not beautiful phrases not comforting sentiments nor vague aspirations to loving-kindness and uplift nor the promise of something nice after death but the terrifying a session that the same God who made the world lived in the world a pass through the grave and gate of death show that to the even and they may not believe it but at least they may realize that here is something that one might be glad to believe of course not everybody will want to hear this in our corrugations Michael hare is a priest of the orange diocese in in California he said congregants is a new word to me congregants often want uplifting generalities and heartwarming comfort food what we really need is somebody like Flannery O'Connor who could shock us into seeing how hard and crucial discipleship is we can't keep the church alive on comfort food I was a young friar in the late 60s and it was a time of crisis and many of our brethren left the order and I think I stayed and many of my generation we stayed because theologians like Herbert McCabe and corny ass owns Vegas car showed us the beauty and the liberation of doctrine that's what sustains you faith do you know when the emotional excitement burns low or when the Holy Spirit seems to have taken a break so that's what we bring the conversation but doesn't it going to be any conversation unless we also come to learn it was citizen Dominic that he understood everything humanly cordis intelligentsia through the humble intelligence of his heart I went to after Peeta Algeria many times I went one month after the death of the monks because our brother piak Lavery was the Bishop of Oh home was receiving death threats and the peer said she best wonder have very dilute I've need of the truth of the other I not only accept that the other is other a distinct subject with freedom of conscience but I accept that he or she may possess a part of the truth I don't have without which my own search the truth cannot be realized Pierre himself was murdered on the 1st of August with his young Muslim friend Mohammed kitchy and I cannot stress too strongly it's the main point I want to make that this dialogue this conversation is not the reduction of things the lowest common denominator it's not fuzziness it's the conversation but makes our hearts burn it's the encounter with the Lord a stranger on the road it's the experience of grace of hilarious Kirk Lavery always said that every conversation leads to conversion and in the first place to my own sinn he said is the desire to make yourself the center of the world the desire to be oneself for oneself on one's own terms before others and before God to see everything in terms of one's self so dialogue it's a whole moral experience it's a spiritual experience of being liberated from the narrow confines of the self we used to have a logician he belonged to another order I've been mentioned which bits are self preoccupied and in the days before there were Mobile's he was wanted on the phone and everybody rushed around trying to find him and he was tracked down in the kitchen and so he said oh there you are and he said now Here I am there you are so dialogue is Adeleke deeply liberating moral spiritual experience of grace a for this to happen again two things are necessary you got to get out of your depth and you've got to discover new words together at the beginning of the new millennium John Paul wrote some of us look in Eltham row out into the depths lose your footing we gotta have the courage to know that we have to sink or swim there's no evangelization paradoxically unless we are prepared to grapple with questions to which we don't have the answer Carl Casper said the church should have much more authority as she said more often I don't know let me quote the israeli poet Yehuda a me chime the place where we are right is hard and trampled like a yard but that's and loves dig up the world like a mole like a plough the very last thing that I did before I got into the bus the ad Heathrow was to interview one of our young friars who wants to make Solon profession an extremely brilliant talented young chappie could be a great theologian and at the end after we talked for an hour he said to me will Timothy what advice do you give me so I mentioned three things the last of which I said was get out of your depth you should always be writing about something which is beyond your grasp don't aim to be a master there's only one master and that's none of us and if we get out of our depth then we'll have to beg for help from other people who don't share our faith and Dominic wished his brothers to be beggars not just for bread because if people see that we need that truth this mantle are very paid a lot and people see that we need that truth they may be open to ours if we give them authority they may accept ours so just ask yourself we haven't got time to go into this time is speeding by but we did get a bit late to me what are the areas where were out of our depth as a culture today one of them is that is actually gender it's interesting so many disputed questions revolve around gender and sexuality and this is not because sexuality is of supreme moral authority importance it isn't herbert mccabe wrote so long as christian morality is thought mainly TV about whether and when people should get a bed no bishops again to be crucified and this is depressing not that we want our bishops presently personally to survive but our society is in a Ralph state of puzzlement about the nature of gender difference the significance of being male and female and here the church has got an ancient wise rich tradition a Christian anthropology but it can only grow and stay alive if we're in dialogue with people with whom we disagree about this from whom we may learn we have to attend to their experience be drawn beyond our comfort zone otherwise our theological tradition will wither there'll be no genetic moment it'll be dead I'll think of homosexuality all every major Church is torn apart by this when I arrived yesterday I looked at the New York Times a big rag aang in the Mormons about it today it's the Methodists or maybe it's the other way around you see a real sense of puzzle do we dare to enter the debate as people have something to say and sang to learn or think of the nature of capitalism recent book by Tom Moore Piketty about how our present economic system is creating ever more radical inequalities in the world this is creating enormous to Bent were having a debate together with the Jesuits in Oxford by putting on are we able to get into the rel crisis of capitalism at this moment in our society which it's a very difficult complex question but unless we're prepared to do this and just like to sit back thinking that we know what we have to say but we'll have nothing to say and sometimes we have to live with truths that seem to be irreconcilable how do you reconcile supporting marriage and welcoming the divorce and the remarried we have to be patient as we find the way forward because the truth is one in God and until we're fully taken up into God we will enjoy moments of clean two conflicting truths and we may have little to say that we can say boldly and that is sometimes for the best William Hill opu taught many of you I know said God cannot do without the stammering ways in which we strive to give utterance word but these hazard words sometimes will have more authority the preachers who are barely boiling over with conviction usually loud conviction is in inverse proportion to actual confidence and secondly in words in any real conversation were seeking new words sometimes you offer your word sometimes you accept other people's or you coin fresh ones you never impose a vocabulary you make it together Augustine said we are urged to sing a new song to the Lord as new people have learnt a new song the new human the new song the new covenant all belong to the one kingdom of God so the new human will sing a new song on the road to emmaus Jesus teaches and you vocabulary for Pope Francis in evangelii gaudium this newness is an inherent part of evangelization he quotes and our aeneas by his coming Christ brought with him all newness every form of authentic evangelization is always new as the generic moment as we age our way into a new vocabulary TS Eliot and little getting last season's fruit is eaten and the full filled beasts shall kick the empty pail the last year's words belong to last year's language and next year's words await another voice so to conclude very rapidly how do we keep the conversation going how do we balance the doubting and the confidence how do we go on talking and with conflicting truths in our my and our minds and I would very briefly just say two things first of all by gesture and secondly by beauty the disciples are filled with joy on the way to Emmaus but they have no idea why it's only a man Emmaus when he breaks the bread that their eyes are opened it's what he did that makes sense of what they felt in a muddled way their inexplicable joy and I think gestures often point to intuited resolutions that we can't yet articulate it's in a gesture that the necessity of death is reconciled with the freedom of the Son of God she remembered that extraordinary moment when Paul the sixth took off his Episcopal ring and he put it on the finger of Michael Ramsey the Archbishop of Canterbury what sense did it make was he recognizing and taking orders what was going on it wasn't clear it was a gesture which is reaching out to a unity of truth that couldn't yet be stated Pope Francis is a great man for gestures do you remember getting to wash the feet of those prisoners including the Muslim woman it raises all sorts of theological questions but it pushes us forwards towards a truth whose coherence Wickett we can barely glimpse and finally beauty in his keynote address on evangelization in villa los angeles religious education Congress this year Robert Barron put Beauty first he said people fear that doctors sooner but a moral vision is moralistic beauty has its own Authority which draws us without threatening our freedom the beauty Belarus - the good and the true I think of people like the only part Jorge macabre and his biographer wrong Ferguson right but in beauty in literature beauty and literature hooked him and reeled him in it was what he saw as the beauty of the Christian doctrines of the Incarnation and Christ's passion which made him a believer nowhere in all created literature he said not in Homer not in Dante that in Shakespeare in Goethe is that a zennith is there anything of such awesome majesty and power as the drama of the passion the imagination could never compass that it must be true beauty white gestures points to a unity of truth but maybe we can't yet articulate Sarah Koch tree she was at Harvard and she's not come to Cambridge in England Sarah Coakley Rhoda I thought a brilliant book on sexuality the doctrine of the Trinity disciplines of Prayer the nature of gender it's an extraordinary achievement and for me the most fascinating chapter was the one on the iconography of the Trinity and she shares that most most images of the Trinity either a try theist got three fat figures you know or else the Aryan who got the father is obviously the boss but there are those few ones where you see how the imagination is touched and drawn towards the truth beyond all words he says she says the most successful do not attempt to describe what it is like Shay ganda but rather stir the imagination director will beyond the known towards the unknown prompting simpler kids half guests as paul ricoeur said the symbol gives rise to thought sir I think evangelization is always rooted in conversation conversation with strangers who become friends and sometimes with friends and we discovered to be strangers but we should boldly share our doctrine and humbly learn we got a dare to get out of our depth be forced to swim and have to beg for help and then we shall experience surely a bit of that hilarious that while ecstatic joy of God's grace and discover his presence thank you very much you

Channel: John S. Marten Program in Homiletics and Liturgics

Views: 10,204

Rating: 4.860465 out of 5

Keywords: To all the world, preaching and the new evangelization, 2014 notre dame preaching conference, marten program in homiletics

Id: 3ePWGez_xP0

Length: 51min 52sec (3112 seconds)

Published: Mon Jul 21 2014