Good preaching can change a parish

by Letters Editor · December 8, 2011

From Roy Glover, Tzaneen

The Southern Cross gets better and better and I so admire your ability to find and appoint brilliant contributors. In the edition of November 16, this was illustrated, for example, by Mphuthumi Ntabeni with his article, �Why we must really know our faith�, and Fr Ron Rolheiser with his article, �Our fear of death is holy, healthy�.

In fact I don�t think you charge enough for The Southern Cross at only R5,50 whereas other Sunday newspapers cost three times as much, but only about 10% of their content is worth reading.

I was so pleased to read in the same edition the comments made by Cardinal Gianfranco Ravasi about the need to improve on sermons.

About seven years ago while visiting England, my wife and I attended Mass at the Catholic church in Borrowash, a suburb of Derby. What a miserable event it was. The congregation consisted of a few very elderly people, and the homily and atmosphere was so depressing that we could not wait to get away. From the way the congregation dispersed after Mass, they obviously all felt the same.

In September this year we returned to Borrowash and reluctantly decided to go to Mass in the same church. What an incredible transformation had taken place!

The church was full, the congregation consisted of a mixture of young and old, and the homily was brilliant. After Mass the congregation, with very few exceptions, went into the church hall where they had a weekly raffle to raise funds for the church and sold tickets for tea and coffee.

I would attribute the quite dramatic improvement to the new priest, Fr Ka Fai Lee, a young priest who was born in Hong Kong and who came and chatted with us in the hall.

A priest has a wonderful opportunity during his homily to create an atmosphere of love and hope and worship for our Lord, and all too often this opportunity is wasted, mainly from a lack of training and inspiration.