This weekend, and next weekend I will have a deacon in our parishes from the Catholic Cemetery office, but he does not speak Spanish. So, I am going to put the rest of my series on the capital sins on the side until I return to a regular schedule of preaching. Next week I will try to tell you what he wanted to say.
The first part of the opening verse of Paul’s reading today actually begins with the line: “For our gospel did not come to you in word alone, but also in power and in the holy Spirit and with much conviction.”
When Paul tried to preach in Athens, he tried to use fancy rhetoric to try to convince the Athenians about Christ. It was a colossal failure. From then on, as he says in another letter, he preached Christ, and Christ crucified. I think in this reading from the Thessalonians, we see the same idea. What I quoted, and the start of our reading today, is only the fifth verse in the entire letter. So it is the opening of his letter.
What was the power, and “in the Holy Spirit” that St. Paul used when he was preaching to …read more
Source:: Fr. Frank Jindra’s Homily Podcasts
