Rethinking Preaching

Last Wednesday I attended a conference on preaching given by Father Peter John Cameron, OP at our Dominican house of St. Dominic's in Youngstown Ohio. It was 14 hours of driving to get there and back, but eminently worth it.

Father Peter John began his presentation by focusing on the relevant Vatican II documents on the liturgical homily, and provided a cogent analysis of the homily as it should be given according to these documents. In doing so, he presented a vision of preaching rather at odds with the way most Dominicans, in my experience, preach.

When I was assigned to St. Rose in Kentucky, the Prior Provincial told me that part of my purpose in being assigned to St. Rose was to instruct the people. Now, any Catholic pastor will tell you that the only place you will ever see about 90% of your congregation is at Sunday Mass. And for that reason, I've always tried in my preaching to balance the need for touching the heart with the need for feeding the mind with instruction in Scripture, doctrine, and morals. Father Peter John's approach is radically different. Sermons instruct; homilies bring the Person of Christ close to the hearer. The readings of the last few weekends have been bringing this home to me in a very firm and unmistakable way; first of all, Christ sits down with sinners so that they may come to know him personally before he begins to instruct them in sainthood.

I have therefore begun to think that I have got to trash the way I preach and start over again. I've got it wrong. I've been doing it wrong. And I have to trust Christ to help me get it right.

As usual, the Lord himself cuts to the heart of the matter. I'm thinking of the call of St. Matthew, again, that we read last week. On setting out as a rabbi, Jesus doesn't teach Scripture, doesn't explain doctrine, doesn't set forth the moral path to goodness - he goes to dinner with sinners. He begins to relate to them on a personal level, while they are still sinners, before he begins to educate them in sanctity. This is true of his own management of the Apostolic College as well. Jesus calls his his men by inviting them to "come and follow" him and taste life in his presence. It's only when they're in his presence, committed to following him, that he begins to instruct them in the Mysteries of the Kingdom.

So the homily must introduce its hearers to the person of Christ in a similar fashion. In terms of sacred preaching, that is, preaching that is carried on in the context of the Divine Liturgy, - a preaching which is reserved to the apostolic ministry, - Christ becomes present to the hearers through the authentic relationship which the preacher first has with Christ. The preacher himself must have seen and experienced the holy fire of Calvary's sacrifice before he can speak of that to others. Just as the Son of God for the sake of our salvation lowered the heavens that God might walk as man among men, so must the preacher find a way to put aside himself, his ego, and even his humility about his own weak and warped relationship with Jesus so that Christ may make himself visible, through his preaching. And the ordained preacher can trust that Christ will do this, because this is precisely the point and purpose of his ordination, his being "set apart" for sacred ministry.

It's really been this way from the beginning. The founder of God's family in the Old Testament, who gathered his twelve sons about him to found Israel's tribes is not known as "the man who spoke of God" or "the man who taught the path of God, "but "the one who wrestles with God." As the Lord himself wrestled with his Father's will for him, so must the preacher wrestle with the Word of God as it is addressed to him and his flock every Sunday and holy day. It is this hard-fought, hard-won manifestation of the presence of God in his own life that gives the the preacher's preaching authenticity and power to touch souls.

So what happens to instruction? I think that any instruction I give in the future at Mass is going to be tangential. I am going to stop trying to educate my flock with the Sunday preaching. I'm going to trust holy Church and Jesus Christ, who makes his will to me known in her, no matter where that leads me.

So what happens to the instruction of my flock?

The difficulty is, that if my people in the pews have not first committed themselves to following Jesus personally, they will have no real profit from instruction in Scripture, doctrine, or morals. The voice of Christ, speaking in the abstract, will become one voice among many competing for their attention in a world where everybody has a program or something to sell. Unless they have first met Christ and tasted the sweetness of his presence, they will experience life in the Church as a straitjacket rather than a road in which Christ companions them to glory. Unless they first have a contemplative heart, a heart that has heard the summons of Christ's own to them personally, there will be no reason for following the Church's path more than any other human philosophy or ethic.

The other night I had a conversation with a young girl who had been a parishioner while I was assigned at St. Patrick's in Columbus. She told me of how she had been speaking with her non-Catholic boyfriend about God and the shape of living the Christian life, and her real difficulties with it. She mentioned, in particular, her concern as to whether or not everything she had been taught was true. She spoke as though she had never met the Lord truly in her heart.

This is a girl who was subjected to my preaching for the ten years I served in Columbus. And I think I have failed her by not preaching as I should have.

We continued our conversation, and I told her some of my own experiences of Jesus from my own life, including the run-in I had with the Sacred Heart which I have already recounted on this blog. I also pointed out to her that that particular incident in my life didn't happen until long after I had decided to follow Jesus and was permanently vowed into the religious life, and had begun to follow him into the apostolic ministry by ordination to the priesthood. I also told her it was natural, in fact, good, to begin to question what she had been taught, since it's by that means that we commonly make what our parents and the Church have taught us us truly our own; but I told her not to give up, either, on really seeking Jesus from the heart - I had found him, and I know that he wants to heal her heart, too.

I think she was encouraged by hearing about an authentic and personal experience of Christ. It was not her experience, but the fact of my testimony to Christ's work in my own life seemed to encourage her and give her a hope that looks forward to Christ's personal intervention in her own life.

For myself, this encounter was somewhat disheartening. This is a girl from a good and devout family. She was troubled was what she perceived to be the absence of Christ's real Presence from her life; and yet he stands in front of her at every Mass, and comes into her very body with every Holy Communion. Perhaps I have not done my job at all well these past 20 years.

Father Lenehan and brother Bruno Clifton (a student brother of the English province) visited yesterday and this was the subject of conversation at breakfast. Father James Murray, with his usual unselfconscious wisdom, pointed out that "a fire gets started from a spark"; and this really is what I need to be focusing on when I preach a homily. Mere instruction will be useless except to these hearts which already know Christ; I need to do my instruction at a time other than Mass. I can heap all the wood I want to on a pyre, but unless something is burning the pyre never becomes a fire.

So I might start giving instruction at other times, like a catechism class on Wednesday nights. Perhaps a series of lectures on topics that my congregation suggests to me may be the way to go. But in any case, Christian instruction is going to have to happen at a time other than the Sunday liturgy.

More about this later; Father Cameron gave us eight useful points for improving our homily, and I need to think these things out on paper to get them right.