What about a good sermon?

Writing from personal experience one can say that, reviewing notes of these past three decades, is always an interesting and refreshing exercise. This perusal of past notes and relevant documents helps one to realise that the problem of homilies during Sunday Mass had already surfaced in the early Seventies. Obviously, sermons and homilies are by far more challenging nowadays than only a few decades ago.

No doubt, if people were asked at what part of the Mass their thoughts become most distracted, isn't it possible, and very likely, that many would answer that it was during the sermon, or homily, as it is now called?

Of course, in one sense this is quite inevitable if the priest in deliberately trying to provoke his listeners to think. If we disagree with what is being said, what else can we do except argue, as it were, within ourselves?

At the same time this should remind us that in fact the preacher is there to simply voice his opinions. He is essentially there to preach the Gospel. His primary and basic mission is to show the relevance of the Good News to the world of today, here and now. And this is no easy task.

A good sermon requires a very good amount of preparation, of attentive reading, of personal attention of what goes on over the week, and deep prayer about the Sunday readings, before the priest sets foot on the lectern or pulpit. Failing to prepare is preparing to fail.

The preacher has to be fully aware that he is expected to take into account also the concerns of the parishioners, the sort of mentality and all that is topical on the national and, quite often, on that international. Indeed, today the whole world is our parish.

At this point it is proper to state that even if the priest has really made every conscientious effort to prepare his Sunday homily well, does this guarantee that his homily will be listened to?

One has to consider that in these days of professionalism in the field of public communication, especially on TV and radio, isn't the preacher facing very strong competition when it comes to holding his listeners' attention?

One remembers that even years ago competent lay people involved in the media, in some European countries and in the US, offered various guidelines to assist priests in the delivery of their homilies.

The first of the guidelines was that preachers should be careful in their choice of words. Where possible, they were advised to use short ones and, unless it was absolutely unavoidable or essential, priests were told never to employ "technical jargon" - theological or otherwise. (The motherly advice Margherita Bosco used to give to her son, St John Bosco (1815-1888) was: "Giovanni, always use the simple word which peasants can understand.")

Competent lay people in the media always suggested that one should always deliver a sermon in short sentences. Those of more than eight words were instantly frowned upon. One was encouraged also to try to use, in homilies, the active rather than the passive mood, the particular instance rather then the general, the concrete illustration rather than the abstract. The preacher has always to keep down to earth: one of the congregation.

One very important given to preachers is that he failed to catch the attention of his congregation in the "first few seconds of the homily it was virtually futile to continue. By then people in the pews were either listening or had already tuned off".

While one is so very grateful to "competent" people of the media for their solid advice to priests who share the good news to the faithful, one has to stress that in a world that is very complacent and plays fast and loose with its faith, preachers have to tell people also what they don't like to hear... in reason and out of reason.