Father Cantalamessa (The Preacher to the Pope)

Here are the promised pictures of Raniero Cantalamessa's visit to Asbury along with a digital short to give you a taste of the events.

Our first interaction with Cantalamessa was in a thirty minute Question and Answer session that Dr. Baucum set up for the Beeson students and a few other guests.

The picture shows how genuine this man is. He was a joy to hear.

I admit that I wanted him to talk more about what it's like to have papal preaching duties, but that wasn't the purpose of his visit. He didn't say much about that part of his vocation (he was appointed to this position, by the way, by the late Pope John Paul. He was retained by Pope Benedict). His purpose in coming to Asbury was to talk about preaching as it relates to our ministries . . . hence . . . no need to drag the Pope into things!

I asked him to talk about the use of allegory in sermons and how to recover it in approriate ways for preaching. He is a Patristics scholar by training (he taught at the University of Milan for a time). His answer was, essentially, that it just takes some wisdom and some common sense; that a preacher must always be careful not to abuse interpretation whether allegory was being used or not.

His understanding of what it takes to interpret scripture kept reminding me of my mother's use of scripture, even though she studied scripture very differently than Cantalamessa. She didn't bring a Ph.D. to the table, but she brought the same spirit to scripture as this man. Over and over I heard echos of my mother's understanding of how God blesses scripture and people and the interaction of the two.

In Bryan Bucher's blog he mentions how amazing it is that the papal pastor was asked to speak at a conservative Methodist seminary in the hinterlands of Kentucky. He's absolutely right. What's even more amazing is that Cantalamessa accepted. He has made it part of his mission to work for Christian unity . . . and that warms the cockles of my heart of Stone-Campbell.

If pictures are worth a thousand words, then this video might be worth seventeen or eighteen words. There is nothing funny in it. No trains will burst onto your screen. I just thought it might be nice to catch a snippet of the action with video. If you're two minutes ahead of schedule today, go ahead and check it out. I also included a little clip of the worship leader, Matt Maher.