What we think is the right road
The goal of a homily is to entertain people, it should be brief, and it should be free from annoying or unsettling content. The best homilies today feature humor, props and ploys to ensure that people pay attention. Rather than "fire and brimstone" sermonizing, the homily should make people feel good. After all, the collection basket is passed soon after the homily, and the collection is thus a financial referendum on the homily's popularity.
But it's the wrong road
The Church exists for three paramount reasons: to glorify God, to save our souls, and to make us saints. Bland homilies are moral failures. The Old Testament Book of Lamentations excoriates such feckless preaching: "Their preaching deceived you by never exposing your sin. They made you think you did not need to repent" (2:14; also see Ez 33:7-9).
St. Paul tells us how vitally important it is for us to call out to Our Lord, but plaintively asks: "How can they call out to Him for help if they have not believed? And how can they believe if they have not heard the message? And how can they hear if the message is not proclaimed?" (Romans 10:14).
Of course, not every priest is a famous preacher like St. John Chrysostom or Servant of God Archbishop Fulton Sheen. Still, homilies can be well prepared, practiced and effectively presented. There is a classic difference between a homily, normally based on the Scriptures proclaimed at a particular Mass, and a sermon, a moral message not necessarily specifically related to the Scripture readings of the day.
Whether delivering homily or sermon, the priest's first duty, after offering the Sacrifice of the Mass, is preaching. That means hours of preparation for what is often a 10-minute or less talk.
Preparation, practice and preparation are necessary but insufficient. They mean nothing if the preacher is unorthodox or even rude (see 2 Tim 2:24). In Brian J. Gail's novel "Fatherless," a good priest constantly "pulls his punches" in his, well, entertaining homilies – until it finally dawns on him that his key preaching responsibility lay in the hard sayings, precisely about those matters which may make us uncomfortable. After all, the prophets comforted the afflicted and afflicted the comfortable.
In Gail's novel, the priest comes to realize that he had not been preaching the difficult issues "because I was afraid my parishioners would turn against me." But he realized that if he continued to preach bland homilies, "God would hold me responsible for their sins ... He would also hold me accountable for every time one of my parishioners, after committing one of these serious sins, ate and drank unworthily – lacerating His Sacred Body all over again."
Some years ago when I was at Mass in another diocese, the first reading concerned the fire of Jeremiah: "My message is like a fire and like a hammer that breaks rocks in pieces" (23:29). The priest's homily that day concerned the next parish ice cream social. I whispered to my wife: "The fire of Jeremiah had been extinguished by ice cream."
The desire to be liked or appreciated is natural. There are times, though, to resist that desire. The good teacher makes academic demands on students; the good coach sets high goals for his athletes; and the good preacher shines the light of faith into areas we find uncomfortable or difficult. No preacher should ever love "the approval of men rather than the approval of God" (John 12:43; also see Gal 1:10, 1 Thess 2:4). This is exactly is what is done when the emphasis is on bland homilies which are full of entertainment but empty of "parrhesia," or boldness in speaking.
We live at a time and in a place of moral chaos. Too often our thoughts, words and deeds are influenced by confusion. Too often we slip into the darkness of what is wrong rather than live in the light of what is right. As Gail points out in his book, we all need fathers – and by "fathers" he means preachers who speak the truth. He means priests whose homilies are powerful witnesses to Christian truth in a society that too often rejects the Gospel.
In a brilliant 1917 encyclical, Pope Benedict XV write: "Therefore it is clear how unworthy of commendation are those preachers who are afraid to touch upon certain points of Christian doctrine lest they should give their hearers offense." The pope, even in the midst of World War I, blamed ineffective preaching by priests for the decline in morals and civilization's backsliding into paganism. Pope Benedict XV died in 1922; what would he say about today's triumphant paganism and the preaching which ought to combat it?
Deacon James H. Toner serves at Our Lady of Grace Church in Greensboro.