A Moratorium on Homilies?
By Sr Susan Rakoczy IHM – Palm Sunday 2016. Palms have been blessed; the Passion was read well by a group. It is homily time. The parish priest begins and adopts the volume of a fiery Pentecostal preacher. I am alarmed by the very loud tone. He then begins to exhort us to “destroy the darkness” — what darkness is he talking about I wonder? South Africa has a multitude of problems — is this the darkness?
Capuchin Father Raniero Cantalamessa preaches during the Good Friday liturgy led by Pope Francis in St. Peter’s Basilica at the Vatican. Father Cantalamessa, the official “preacher of the papal household,” has been preaching at the Good Friday service since 1980.(CNS photo/Paul Haring)
No, it is the “darkness” of Calvary. Are we supposed to destroy “darkness” as we enter into Holy Week? I thought that was the power of the death and resurrection of Christ. Silly me — I am just a theologian, not a priest.
He continues and moves into moralising mode: do not gossip, do not be “self-referential” and do not “consider yourself indispensable”. What does this have to do with the readings of Palm Sunday? It doesn’t of course. Then we are told “to be nice” to each other.
Then I switch off and pray the Jesus Prayer as he goes on and on.
Was this a homily on the readings of Palm Sunday? Of course not. It was a striking but not unusual example of what the People of God so often have to endure Sunday after Sunday from priests and deacons who do not prepare their homilies and/or who have no idea how to present the Word of God in a way that touches and transform hearts and minds.
In Evangelii Gaudium (#135-144) Pope Francis discusses the homily. He is clear and forthright. From his pastoral experience in the archdiocese of Buenos Aires he must have heard many laments about the poor quality of homilies.
He states: “We know that the faithful attach great importance to it, and that both they and their ordained ministers suffer because of homilies: the laity from having to listen to them and the clergy from having to preach them! It is sad that this is the case.”
It is more than sad; it is scandalous that priests can use the “homily space” as they wish and subject the People of God to what I would call nonsense, as my experience proved.
If we think about those who preach well, they have many things in common: a life of prayer, a commitment to serious preparation of the homily, the willingness to read, pray and reflect deeply on the text, the ability to connect the Word with ordinary life.
Poor homilists do the following: seldom pray over the texts, use Internet homilies, think that repeating the Gospel is a homily (this happened in another parish this Lent when the Gospel which was the story of the Prodigal Son was retold to us in the “homily space”), moralise (“do this, don’t do that”) and prepare on Sunday morning at they drive or walk to the church.
A few years ago a priest told me that he prepares his homily in the shower on Sunday morning!
What can be done? Here is a radical suggestion because of the crisis in preaching. The Southern African Catholic Bishops’ Conference should declare a one-year moratorium on all homilies. No homilies will be given—not even on Christmas, nor on Easter. Instead, after the Gospel is read, all are invited to reflect on the readings in silence for five minutes.
During this year of no homilies, each bishop is to organise preaching workshops for the priests and deacons.
If the bishop truly knows his priests and deacons, then he knows who is a good homilist. Those priests are asked to conduct these workshops. Each person who attends must bring what he considers his best homily and his worst homily, and these become the basis for the workshops. Laity and religious of the diocese are invited to participate in the workshops and to critique the homilies.
The reality is that priests are living off the classes they took in homiletics when they studied theology. At St Joseph’s Theological Institute at Cedara, where I lecture, the requirement is one four-credit course taken over one semester. Possibly the religious congregations to which our students belong supplement this.
This means that for the rest of his priestly life, unless he is an unusual person, the priest lives off what he had learned when he was in his mid-20s. No wonder we are in this crisis! (In fairness, I have to point out that I don’t know what St John Vianney Seminary, where diocesan priests are trained, requires in homiletics.)
I preach twice a year at St Joseph’s and at other places, so I know how demanding it is to prepare a homily. But taking shortcuts and serving up unpalatable food does not build the faith of the People of God.
Instead, it makes some leave the Church in disgust and induces boredom and apathy in others.
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