THIS is both the task and the challenge of a good teacher. He
has to know how to proclaim the truth about the subject he teaches. He has to
dish out the pertinent data, information, and other trivia. But he also has to
wage a continuing dialogue with all the relevant references of his job, so that
his stock of knowledge would not grow idle, stagnant, if not dead.
A teacher who has been teaching the
same subject in school for years has to make continuing research and study, and
be sensitive to the developments of his field that these days are in a
galloping state. He has to pay attention to the authorities and experts of his
field, as well as to his students in their concrete situations and conditions.
In a sense, he is like a mediator, a bridge.
In fact, if he has to stay afloat in
his work or business, he has to continually find new frontiers. He should not
be contented with what he already knows and has achieved. Though there are
things that by their nature will stay permanent and unchangeable, he should not
forget that there are also things that can and should change depending on the
circumstances and developments.
In this regard, it might be relevant
to cite some words of that Chinese business wonder by the name of Jack Ma,
founder of Alibaba:
“What I said on the occasion of our
IPO last year when we raised US$25 billion bears repeating. What we earned was
not money, but trust. Maintaining that trust means we must listen carefully to
the views of others. It also means we must reflect on the challenges we have
been communicating with our shareholders and the public.”
And this task of engaging in
continuing dialogue with others is especially true when we have to preach the
living word of God. We should not only proclaim it. Sooner or later, if we just
contend ourselves with proclaiming it, we will realize that in spite of our
best efforts at rhetoric and oratory, it will sound stale and meaningless, and
our proclamation will just fall on deaf ears.
One has to make his preaching an
occasion to dialogue vitally with God and with others. Otherwise, what is
living and life-giving in it can freeze and become ineffective. When we notice
that our preaching does not have some sensible impact on us and on others, we
have good reason to suspect that our preaching has not been a dialogue with God
and with others.
When our proclamation of God’s
living word is also a
dialogue with God and with others, there will always be some palpable effects,
some transformation, some conversion. That’s because God’s word is always
effective, as the Letter to the Hebrews says: “For the word of God is living
and active…” (4,12)
We have to understand that this
living word of God is both old and new, divine and human, supernatural and
natural. It embraces both time and eternity. There are things in it that will
never change, but also things that have to change and adapt to circumstances.
In the end, the word of God is his
Son, the second person of the Blessed Trinity, who became man to save us.
Christ is the Word, who is both God and man, the lone and perfect mediator
between God and man.
That God became man and continues to
be man in Christ can only speak of how God himself undertakes a continuing
dialogue with man. His interventions and involvement in the life of man are
constant and ongoing.
This is also the attitude we have to
have when we preach God’s living word, or put in another way of saying it, when
we preach Christ. We just have to keep on dialoguing with God and with others,
to the point that we become like them somehow.
With God’s grace and with our utmost
faith and generous efforts, we can achieve this ideal. The crucial point here
is our effort to identify ourselves more and more with Christ. That’s because
it’s only with him that we would be able not to get lost in our task of
dialoguing and adapting ourselves to others, even as we proclaim God’s word.
And so, we need to find time always
to have a very intimate prayer and conversation with God, meditating on his
word, making it our own and applying to our condition at the moment and to that
of the others.
This is always possible, since God’s
word will always
adapt to us in all our circumstances and situations.
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