Gurney Halleck 1,
**You wrote: ** *I sometimes wonder, though, about people who are well-grounded in Scripture, who come to know Jesus deeply through these sermons, prayer, and who do his will compared to someone who receives the Sacraments and yet doesn’t know the Scriptures well, doesn’t know Christ in a meaningful way, and becomes robotic about those sacraments, which one truly knows Christ? *
Well, the Catholic sacraments ARE more important than preaching, even good preaching. It is God Himself Who does His perfect work through them, whereas even good and orthodox preachers offer what is human and imperfect. Ideally there should be a good balance of sacraments and preaching, but at least, in these difficult times for the Catholic Church when disobedience and deviation runs amok in clergy ranks, there is an advantage in homilies tending to be so short: bad and careless preaching doled out in such small doses tends to have little effect on the laity, who still hear a LOT of the very words of Holy Scripture in the Lectionary and elsewhere in the liturgy. God works through his word (as objectively truly as in His sacraments), and that is something that does not get interfered with much in a less than satisfactory brief homily of erratic quality.
Given the choice, I’d go for the sacraments with no sermon or homily at all than for a sermon-dominated service that even has too great likelihood of introducing error.
Pax, Jerry Parker
And the Word became flesh, and dwelt among us, and we saw His glory, glory as of the only begotten from the Father, full of grace and truth.
"Sanctify them in the truth; Your word is truth.
since we heard of your faith in Christ Jesus and the love which you have for all the saints; because of the hope laid up for you in heaven, of which you previously heard in
the word of truth, the gospel which has come to you, just as in all the world also
it {the word of truth or gospel} is constantly bearing fruit and increasing
In the exercise of His will He brought us forth by the word of truth, so that we would be a kind of first fruits among His creatures.
And I saw heaven opened, and behold, a white horse, and He who sat on it {is} called Faithful and True, and in righteousness He judges and wages war. His eyes {are} a flame of fire, and on His head {are} many diadems; and He has a name written {on Him} which no one knows except Himself. {He is} clothed with a robe dipped in blood, and ***His name is called The Word of God. ***
In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God.
For I am not ashamed of the gospel, for it is the power of God for salvation to everyone who believes, to the Jew first and also to the Greek.
In Him, you also, after listening to the message of truth, the gospel of your salvation–having also believed, you were sealed in Him with the Holy Spirit of promise,
Jesus would beg to differ with you; hope you got the message.