Perhaps you’ve heard the story before.

A priest was driving down the road, traveling well beyond the posted speed limit. He looked in his rear view mirror and saw blue lights flashing.

Overwhelmed by that sinking feeling, he thought quickly, “What can I say to get out of a speeding ticket?”

As the officer approached the car, the priest mustered up his most plaintive voice and said to the officer, “Go easy on me, for I am just a poor preacher.” The policeman replied, “I know, I’ve heard you.”

In 1990, the National Opinion Research Center published challenging findings on the importance of preaching in the Catholic Church. The NORC data concluded, “The most critical single step the Church could take to improve its effectiveness in the United States is to upgrade the quality of its preaching.”

Homily critical to priestly ministry, liturgy

Effective preaching requires attentive listening, careful study, prayer and meditation, creativity, organization, an active imagination, and deep immersion into the lives of the people.

The Second Vatican Council described the proclamation of the Gospel of God by the priest as their primary duty.

Among the various forms of preaching and teaching, the liturgical homily enjoys a place of pre-eminence.

Because the homily is part of the apostolic ministry of the Church, it is a liturgical action reserved to bishop, priest or deacon. This “rule of ritual,” according to Father Jeremy Driscoll, OSB, is a reminder that all the Scriptures are read and understood in the context of liturgy “under the authority of apostolic faith.”

The homily is so integral to Sacred Liturgy that the Code of Canon Law states unequivocally that “It must be given at all Masses on Sunday and Holy Days of Obligation and cannot be omitted except for a grave cause.”

In his work entitled “What Happens at Mass,” Father Jeremy Driscoll underscores the beauty and mystery of liturgical preaching and proclamation. Driscoll writes,

“Jesus Himself visits the assembly in a
very concrete form, speaking today to
us these words, working this miracle,
telling this parable, eating and drinking
with these sinners.”

Effective liturgical preaching enables the community “to recognize God’s active presence and respond with more Gospel-like lives” (Fulfilled in Your Hearing). Good preaching helps actualize the “full conscious and active participation” of the entire assembly and sends forth the listener to illumine and transform society in the light of the Gospel.

Meeting the challenge of effective preaching

Every homilist will tell you that preaching is difficult and challenging work. It is a mixture of both art and science.

Father Walter Burghardt, in his work entitled “Long Have I Loved You,” startles his reader when he reveals, “I average four hours of preparation for every minute in the pulpit.”

But not all the homilist’s hours are spent sitting before a computer screen. Homiletic preparation includes pastoral work among the people, an active life of prayer, reading and study, and contemplation on the common pastoral experiences of the day.

Walter Burghardt states, “Our homily is all around us: The Word of God touched to the experiences of our people.”

The late Bishop Kenneth Untener, who himself was a gifted preacher, wrote a practical guidebook entitled “Better Preaching.” Its purpose was to raise the quality of homilies and to offer homilists practical suggestions on “what to do, how to do it, and for heaven sake, what to stay away from.”

Untener underscored the import and impact of the well prepared homily and underlined the need for discipline, focus and feedback.

Untener admonished the preacher to “resist the temptation to use the homily to teach about Scriptures or about doctrines.” In a word, the Scriptural homily is enriched by doctrine, and doctrinal preaching is enlivened by sacred Scripture. Both recognize and celebrate the presence of Christ in the community and in the lives of the people.

In the words of Bishop Georges Gilson, Bishop of Le Mans, “The homily is a liturgical action ... an act of prayer that moves toward the table of the Eucharist. … The homily nourishes, admonishes and proclaims the presence of the Living Christ in and among the community of faith, a step toward the action of grace.”

Bishop Untener, in his inimitable way, offered a number of practical suggestions designed to challenge the preacher and increase the quality of the homily.

He drove home the all important truism that “Many a mediocre homily was one step away from greatness: editing.”

He encouraged the preacher to write out his text, free it from jargon, edit out repetitive phrases and exercise the “pain of cutting.”

Untener suggested that the homilist reconcile the fact that it takes time to prepare a good homily.

He therefore encouraged the preacher to cultivate a professional attitude, that of a scholar, writer, artist and spiritual leader.

Bishop Untener strongly enjoined the preacher to get feedback from the folks on a regular basis and in a systematic fashion. “Have someone time your homily now and then,” he suggested. (Wasn’t it Eleanor Roosevelt who once quipped: “If I had taken more time, I would have written a shorter letter”?) He also added in wry fashion, “no matter how well a homily is going, don’t think they are enjoying it as much as you are.”

He counseled that the homilist would do well to avoid a bad ending which can seriously damage a good homily. In vintage Untener-esque fashion, he offered that “Ending a good homily is like trying to get out of a canoe.”

Future steps in the diocese

The benefits of homiletic discipline pay high dividends for the entire assembly.

In the upcoming year I will ask our own Liturgical Commission in the Diocese of Helena to take up the all important topic of effective homiletics, and offer opportunities in the future designed to raise the quality of liturgical preaching in our Diocese of Helena.

This seemingly small step has immense potential to help transform the quality of liturgy and life in the Diocese of Helena.


Published in The Montana Catholic, Vol. 23, No. 11, November 16, 2007.