Ambrose who "brought meditation upon the Scriptures into the Latin world, ... introducing the practice of 'lectio divina' to the West." This practice "guided all his own preaching and writing which flow, in fact, from his listening ... to the Word of God."
The bishop saint made certain that those who wished to become Christians "learnt first the art of correct living" in order "to be prepared for the great Mysteries of Christ." His preaching was founded on "the reading of Sacred Scripture" with the aim of "living in conformity with divine Revelation.
"It is evident," the Pope added, "that the preacher's personal witness and the exemplary nature of the Christian community influence the effectiveness of preaching. ... From this point of view, one decisive factor is life context, the reality of how the Word is lived."
Benedict XVI recalled the fact that St. Augustine in his Confessions recounts how his own conversion was not due "chiefly to the beautiful homilies" of Ambrose, whom he knew in Milan, but above all "to the witness of the bishop and of his Milanese Church, who sang and prayed together like one single body."
"Who educates in the faith," he continued, "cannot run to the risk of appearing like a clown who plays a role, ... rather he must be like the beloved disciple who rested his head on the Master's heart and there learnt how to think, speak and act."
You know in the past I had built up a fan base because of my satirical Lenny Bruce routine, and I used to get feedback from those fans of mine stating that I was without a doubt the absolutely best writer on the Internet. Actually I was not the best writer, I was just the most ironic writer on the Internet, and it was this ability to expose the hypocritical irony in just about anything that just made me seem so damned funny, and when someone is that funny all the time, that makes people think that they are 'the single best writer on the Internet today'. It was Lenny Bruce who said that the true source of all genuine comedy was horror and tragedy, and I discovered that he was right. Hell, even something as deadly serious and somber as Adolph Hitler is really, when you look at the rancid hypocricy swirling around that dreadful horror, just as funny as hell. You know, it really did piss off Hitler that America and Britain and France and all those other European countries had already invaded and conquered the whole fucking planet, and then there was not even so much as one country left over that Hitler could invade and conquer. If he wanted to conquer and plunder some imperialist colony he would have to make do with some hard to chew leftover, like Russia. It is for this reason that I always find Remembrace Day or Memorial Day to be so damned funny, because on this day we all forget all about those big feuds, those two World Wars with a very jealous Germany which had no Imperialist Colonies, and instead we trot out any old war vet who might not yet be dead and we give thanks for the war to save freedom and democracy and become very solemn and spend a whole entire day spewing out naked hypocritical bullshit. Now I could get very depressed about these things, or I could get very ironic and make people roar with laughter, and given the choice I think I would rather laugh, since ironic humor is the Weapon of Mass Destruction when it comes to propaganda, and given that I am certainly no fig leaf wearing Christian, but rather I am the Prophet of YAHWEH, preacher of the Garden of Eden, I think that I would rather do the Prophet of YAHWEH thing and raze the place right to the ground, leaving nothing behind but some ploughed field rather than being a very nice and well behaved fellow.
