Remember when the pastor preached fire and brimstone half the time, condemning non-Catholics and non-church attending Catholics to hell, and preached money the rest of the time? What happened?
Unless you've been visiting family in Outer Mongolia for the past year, everyone knows that Pope Francis has brought a new emphasis on compassion, mercy, forgiveness and care of the poor to the Catholic Church, through his deed and his words. But the changes in preaching began with the Second Vatican Council. The Council Fathers wanted the entire church to read and pray the bible. So they expanded the Sacred Scripture passages which are read at Sunday and weekday Masses. They also wisely decreed that priests should use the scriptural readings as the basis for their preaching, in both style and substance.
Take the gospel of the third Sunday in Lent in the A cycle, the story of the woman at the well in John 4. Jesus astonishes his disciples by actually talking to a woman in public--a no-no in his culture. And not just any woman, one who is shunned by her village neighbors and has been married five times. He treats her and her questions with respect. By the end of their conversation, she is going to other villagers and urging them to see this man who knew everything about her. She becomes a most unlikely "evangelist," telling the good news of Jesus to those who haven't heard of him.
In style and substance we preachers are to imitate Jesus. He doesn't condemn, but he does confront sin. He engages his listeners, even those whom others want to write off as losers. He teaches in a way that invites people to learn more. He doesn't condemn people to hell. He invites people to learn more about him.
(The only persons Jesus is critical of are the most religiously observant--the Pharisees and the scribes. He calls them hypocrites, or actors, because they perform all the necessary prayers but their hearts are far from love.)
Jesus preached money--but not like the pastors of old. He wasn't clergy, and accepted what donations came his way. He recognized the value of money as a means, not an end. Money should be used to help the poor, and provide for the temple in Jerusalem. But only God is truly rich. Any human being who worked at accumulating wealth was "owned" by it, and thereby placed his trust in things not God. ("You cannot love God and mammon.")
I've long been challenged by this saying of Jesus: "Make friends for yourselves with dishonest wealth, so that when it fails, you will be welcomed into eternal dwellings." How does one make friends with dishonest wealth? By giving it away to those in need. Jesus lived in voluntary poverty; translated today it means our lives are characterized by simplicity and generosity. "Give us this day our daily bread," not an excessive savings account.
One final thought. I've often wondered if those old-time priests really did preach fire-and-brimstone or give-money-to-the-church as often as they did. My suspicion is that those sermons were only occasionally given, but so harsh that the faithful remembered them all too well, and then repeated and repeated their self-serving and mean message. The faithful knew that God is love more than some priests. Yes, we human beings sin, and need to be reminded of our sinful ways. Yes, we human beings need to support the church, and some members of the parish fail to do so. But any follower of Christ cannot do the reminding of our failures with self-righteous anger. Pope Francis, and the Sacred Scriptures, lead us to the compassion of Christ our Savior.
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