The Application of Logotherapy in the Preaching

Abstract

Even today, in a society strongly marked by secularism and globalization, the Church is sent to proclaim the faith in Jesus Christ and his saving act. The resurrected Jesus himself entrusted this task to the Church before his ascension: “So go, teach all nations and baptize them” (Mt 28, 19). The proclamation of the Gospel is at the beginning of all the apostolic activity of the Church. She can never give up this eminent role because she would cease to be the authentic Church of Christ. The proclamation involves two levels: content and formal. In this paper, we will focus on the content level, specifically the existential issues of human existence. We start from the assumption of a general human desire for meaning. The search for meaning in psychology and psychotherapy was developed by Viktor E. Frankl (1905-1997), when after a horrible personal experience from the Auschwitz concentration camp, he developed his own therapeutic method, the so-called logotherapy. In the following text we will focus on the application of some principles of logotherapy in practical preaching activities. The topic is also relevant in connection with the global pandemic, which unexpectedly and dramatically “forced” humanity to abandon its existing certainties and look for new ones.