“I think that the Lord wants to give us many graces, because we have to preach,” said Father Francis Martin, who gave a week-long scripture study on the Kingdom of God at the Franciscan University of Steubenville Priests, Deacons and Seminarians Conference. “We have to preach. Preach the realities in a way that our people are impressed, touched, changed, and healed.”<\/p>\n
The conference, held June 9-13, attracted about 200 priests, deacons, and seminarians from throughout the U.S., Canada, and Nicaragua. The theme, “You Will Receive Power!” focused on strengthening pastors to grow in holiness. <\/p>\n
Father Martin, a professor of New Testament at the Dominican House of Studies in Washington, D.C., led the conference attendees throughout the week. He continued his talk, “Preaching the Kingdom,” showing different aspects of a priest\u2019s life, from the spiritual to the everyday. <\/p>\n
“You\u2019ve got the furnace to fix, the sick to visit, you\u2019re running around, a lot,” he said. “That\u2019s work, but it\u2019s easy. What\u2019s hard is to pray, fast, wait, and study until the reality really touches your heart, and you\u2019ve got something to say.” <\/p>\n
His talks wove both the practical and spiritual, highlighting Scripture passages and explaining the truth in each passage, enriching listeners in their knowledge of Scripture. He asked them to be careful to stay focused on God and their duties and to ignore the “false attractiveness” of the modern culture. <\/p>\n
“We have let our minds be dragged into captivity,” Father Martin said. “There\u2019s a reality beyond all these distractions and it is Jesus.” <\/p><\/blockquote>\n
Visit the link<\/a> for more on what the attendees saw and heard. Great stuff. More of the clergy should hear it.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Priests, deacons and seminarians got an earful recently at a conference called “You Will Receive Power!,” focusing on how to grow in holiness. Juding from this account, it touched not-so-subtly on the topic of preaching, too: “I think that the Lord wants to give us many graces, because we have to preach,” said Father Francis…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":204,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[34,5],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-3106","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-the-art-of-preaching","category-vocations"],"yoast_head":"\n
"Preach the realities in a way that our people are impressed" - The Deacon's Bench<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/deaconsbench\/2008\/06\/preach-the-realities-in-a-way-that-our-people-are-impressed.html\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\""Preach the realities in a way that our people are impressed" - The Deacon's Bench\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"Priests, deacons and seminarians got an earful recently at a conference called “You Will Receive Power!,” focusing on how to grow in holiness. Juding from this account, it touched not-so-subtly on the topic of preaching, too: “I think that the Lord wants to give us many graces, because we have to preach,” said Father Francis…\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:url\" content=\"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/deaconsbench\/2008\/06\/preach-the-realities-in-a-way-that-our-people-are-impressed.html\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:site_name\" content=\"The Deacon's Bench\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:published_time\" content=\"2008-06-17T18:25:00+00:00\" \/>\n<meta name=\"author\" content=\"Deacon Greg Kandra\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:card\" content=\"summary_large_image\" \/>\n<!-- \/ Yoast SEO plugin. -->","yoast_head_json":{"title":"\"Preach the realities in a way that our people are impressed\" - The Deacon's Bench","robots":{"index":"index","follow":"follow","max-snippet":"max-snippet:-1","max-image-preview":"max-image-preview:large","max-video-preview":"max-video-preview:-1"},"canonical":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/deaconsbench\/2008\/06\/preach-the-realities-in-a-way-that-our-people-are-impressed.html","og_locale":"en_US","og_type":"article","og_title":"\"Preach the realities in a way that our people are impressed\" - The Deacon's Bench","og_description":"Priests, deacons and seminarians got an earful recently at a conference called “You Will Receive Power!,” focusing on how to grow in holiness. Juding from this account, it touched not-so-subtly on the topic of preaching, too: “I think that the Lord wants to give us many graces, because we have to preach,” said Father Francis…","og_url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/deaconsbench\/2008\/06\/preach-the-realities-in-a-way-that-our-people-are-impressed.html","og_site_name":"The Deacon's Bench","article_published_time":"2008-06-17T18:25:00+00:00","author":"Deacon Greg Kandra","twitter_card":"summary_large_image","schema":{"@context":"https:\/\/schema.org","@graph":[{"@type":"WebPage","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/deaconsbench\/2008\/06\/preach-the-realities-in-a-way-that-our-people-are-impressed.html","url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/deaconsbench\/2008\/06\/preach-the-realities-in-a-way-that-our-people-are-impressed.html","name":"\"Preach the realities in a way that our people are impressed\" - The Deacon's Bench","isPartOf":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/deaconsbench\/#website"},"datePublished":"2008-06-17T18:25:00+00:00","dateModified":"2008-06-17T18:25:00+00:00","author":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/deaconsbench\/#\/schema\/person\/5a7b3c6e9d155e382842aa310ff9b1ee"},"breadcrumb":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/deaconsbench\/2008\/06\/preach-the-realities-in-a-way-that-our-people-are-impressed.html#breadcrumb"},"inLanguage":"en-US","potentialAction":[{"@type":"ReadAction","target":["https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/deaconsbench\/2008\/06\/preach-the-realities-in-a-way-that-our-people-are-impressed.html"]}]},{"@type":"BreadcrumbList","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/deaconsbench\/2008\/06\/preach-the-realities-in-a-way-that-our-people-are-impressed.html#breadcrumb","itemListElement":[{"@type":"ListItem","position":1,"name":"Home","item":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/deaconsbench"},{"@type":"ListItem","position":2,"name":"“Preach the realities in a way that our people are impressed”"}]},{"@type":"WebSite","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/deaconsbench\/#website","url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/deaconsbench\/","name":"The Deacon's Bench","description":"Where a Roman Catholic Deacon Ponders the World","potentialAction":[{"@type":"SearchAction","target":{"@type":"EntryPoint","urlTemplate":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/deaconsbench\/?s={search_term_string}"},"query-input":{"@type":"PropertyValueSpecification","valueRequired":true,"valueName":"search_term_string"}}],"inLanguage":"en-US"},{"@type":"Person","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/deaconsbench\/#\/schema\/person\/5a7b3c6e9d155e382842aa310ff9b1ee","name":"Deacon Greg Kandra","image":{"@type":"ImageObject","inLanguage":"en-US","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/deaconsbench\/#\/schema\/person\/image\/","url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/deaconsbench\/wp-content\/wphb-cache\/gravatar\/114\/1144d939be636f641ea021e1d347f9fdx96.jpg","contentUrl":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/deaconsbench\/wp-content\/wphb-cache\/gravatar\/114\/1144d939be636f641ea021e1d347f9fdx96.jpg","caption":"Deacon Greg Kandra"},"description":"A Roman Catholic deacon serving the Diocese of Brooklyn, New York, Greg Kandra is News Director for the diocese's cable channel, NET (New Evangelization Television.) Prior to that, Deacon Greg worked for 26 years as a writer and producer for CBS News, where he contributed to \"The CBS Evening News with Katie Couric,\" \"60 Minutes II,\" \"48 Hours,\" (Emmy Award, Writers Guild of America Award) and \"Sunday Morning.\" He was co-writer for the acclaimed documentary \"9\/11,\" hosted by Robert DeNiro. (Emmy Award, Christopher Award, Peabody Award, Writers Guild of America Award.) His radio essays were featured in the bestselling book \"Deadlines and Datelines\" by Dan Rather. He's also a two-time winner of the Catholic Press Association Award. Other places you may find him: AMERICA, U.S. CATHOLIC, CATHOLIC DIGEST, REALITY (Redemptorist Communications) and THE BROOKLYN TABLET. He also contributes homiletic reflections to the parish resource CONNECT!, published by Liturgical Publications. In November 2009, he began serving a three-year term as a consultant to the Communications Committee of the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops (USCCB). Deacon Greg grew up in Maryland (Go Terps!) but he and his wife today live in the beautiful borough of Queens, New York. You can contact Deacon Greg at dcngreg@gmail.com.","url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/deaconsbench\/author\/gkandra"}]}},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/deaconsbench\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3106","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/deaconsbench\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/deaconsbench\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/deaconsbench\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/204"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/deaconsbench\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3106"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/deaconsbench\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3106\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/deaconsbench\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3106"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/deaconsbench\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3106"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/deaconsbench\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3106"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}