Newman aimed for bull’s eye

It is not unusual to hear that even when the preacher makes a good start, he covers so many subjects that listeners soon lose their train of thought. The counsel of Bl John Henry Newman (1801-90) can inject a new lease of life into what often appears to be rather scattergun preaching.

No multi-thematic sermons for Newman: “Nothing is so fatal to the effect of a sermon as the habit of preaching on three or four subjects at once…I add that, even though we preach on only one at a time, finishing and dismissing the first before we go to the second, and the second before we go to the third, still, after all, a practice like this, though not open to the inconvenience which the confusing of one subject with another involves, is in matter of fact nothing short of the delivery of three sermons in succession without break between them” (Idea of a University).

Newman’s central idea was that “as a marksman aims at the bull’s eye and at nothing else”, so the preacher must aim at a definite point, which he has to hit”.

The bull’s eye was not a single verse but a theme based on that verse, and complemented by texts across the Bible. In a sermon from his Anglican days, “Promising without Doing”—based on Matthew 21:28-30, the parable of the two sons in their father’s vineyard—he refers to Proverbs 4:18 and James 2:26 in aiming at a definite point.

In his Catholic sermons Newman usually confined himself to the gospel reading for the day, but in one example, “Stewards and also Sons of God”, on the Eighth Sunday after Pentecost in 1870, he switches halfway to the epistle, specifically Romans 8:12, but via Isaiah 40.

While not consciously appealing to the proofs of logos, pathos and ethos, Newman epitomised all three. “Talent, logic, learning, words, manner, voice, action, all are required for the perfection of a preacher”; but “one thing is necessary”—an intense perception and appreciation of the end for which he preaches, and that is, to be the minister of some definite spiritual good to those who hear him. It calls for earnestness, not thereby meaning that the preacher must aim at earnestness, but that by aiming at his object he will at once become earnest.

Although his motto was Cor ad cor loquitur (“Heart to Heart”), Newman was not given to visibly arousing the emotions of his listeners. He believed the preacher “must aim at imprinting on the heart what will never leave it, and this he cannot do unless he employ himself on some definite subject, which he has to handle and weigh, and then, as it were, to hand over from himself to others”.

Contrary to St Augustine and Archbishop François Fénelon, whom we covered in the past two articles in this series, Newman held that the message must first reach the intellect, then the heart. In his ability to penetrate people’s consciences and lead them to repentance, conversion, and obedience he certainly was acting in the realm of pathos.

His eyes were glued to his notes, his body motionless, yet it was said by one who was present on one occasion that when he spoke it was as if a stroke of electricity passed through the church. His impeccable diction interspersed with 30 second long pauses captured listeners; in a rather rough-and-ready simulation of a few of Newman’s sermons I estimate that they would have been at least between 15 to 20 minutes long.

Although there have been changes in liturgy and shifts in biblical scholarship, what fledgling preachers can learn from Newman is how to produce homilies of substance and profundity and to deliver these with fitting reverence and earnestness—but not without a joyous countenance.

Next month: Fulton Sheen, the “Microphone of God”.