“Hear the Word! Do the Word!”
Humbly welcome the word that has been
planted
in you. Be doers of the word and not
hearers only.
James 1:21-22
You would
never know it, but preaching the gospel is the primary duty of priests:
not celebrating mass, not doing baptisms, not hearing confessions, not witnessing
weddings, but preaching. Catholics have
been disappointed with Catholic Church preaching for so long, they dare not
expect it any more. When Catholics do find a priest who can preach, they tend
to follow him from church to church like hungry puppies. Others just do without this spiritual food, year after year, or leave or join some Protestant denomination.
This
problem, I believe, can be traced back to the Reformation, four hundred years
ago. It is a bit simplistic, but in that painful divorce Catholics took the altar and Protestants took the
pulpit. Protestants all but gave up the Eucharist and we all but gave up
preaching. That’s why most Protestant
churches, at least until very recently, have a tiny little altar table and a
huge pulpit, while most Catholic churches have a tiny little pulpit and a huge
altar.
Catholics
who leave us for a pulpit somewhere else must also know that they are going off and leaving
the Eucharist. What we need to do, what we have been working on over the last
several years, is to be able to offer both: a powerful celebration of the Liturgy of the Word
followed by a powerful celebration of the Liturgy of the Eucharist.
Preaching is
being taken more seriously than ever in our seminaries. I am no professional
homiletics professor, but I have been teaching homiletics (preaching) at St.
Meinrad Seminary. I constantly challenge priests in the retreats I lead here and abroad to take preaching seriously - more seriously than anything else they do. The downfall of most preaching courses is that they focus way
too much on public speaking techniques and not enough on the faith of the
preacher. What I stress with priests is that preaching must be the bedrock of their personal spiritual life. My belief is similar to what William Faulkner said, “If a story is
in you, it has to come out.” I always
remind my students and my fellow priests that if the love of God is in our hearts, we will find an
effective way to communicate it. If not, our homily will just be another speech about
God. A homily is not a speech. The purpose of a homily is to turn on a
bulb in listeners' hearts, to help the listener make a connection with God.The response to a good homily is "Ah,ha! Now I get it!" As we learned in the seminary, “Nemo dat quod non habet.” If you ain’t got
it, you ain’t give it.
The
preacher, and readers of scriptures at Mass as well, must be the first to ‘humbly
welcome the word” and to “be a doers of the word and not just speakers and
readers only." Preaching, especially, is an awesome responsibility and the
well from which it comes must be constantly filled! The preacher must know himself, know others
and know God, and be able to talk about it all three in a convincing way.
Lectors don’t just “read to people,” they “proclaim the good news.”
Humbly welcome the
word that has been planted
in you. Be doers of
the word and not hearers only.
For the next
few Sundays our second reading will be taken from the Letter of James. James is
famous for his insistence that faith is lived, not just claimed and talked
about. He tells us today, “Be doers of the word and not hearers only.” Later on we will hear him say, “What good is it to profess
faith without practicing it? If a brother or sister has nothing to wear and no
food for the day, and you say to them, “Good-bye and good luck! Keep warm and
well fed,” but do not meet their bodily needs, what good is that? So it is with
faith that does nothing in practice. It is thoroughly lifeless.”
My fellow
Catholics, we cannot be ignorant of scripture and at the same time do as God
has asked us. As the Letter to the Romans puts it, “Every one who calls upon
the name of the Lord will be saved. But how can they call upon him in whom they
have not believed? And how can they believe unless they have heard of him? And
how can they hear unless there is someone to preach? Faith, then, comes through
hearing, and what is heard is the word of Christ.”
It would be
wonderful if every one of us took the opportunity to study scripture in a
formal way. Scripture classes are offered in almost every parish these days.
The diocese has many continuing education classes available on scripture. However, one of the simplest ways to study scripture is to take advantage of our Liturgy
of the Word each week. To get the most out of the Liturgy of the Word each week,
three things must happen. (1) Readers must read well. (2) Preachers must preach
well. (3) You must learn to listen well.
(1) One of
the hardest things to get across to lectors is that they are not just “reading
to people," but “proclaiming the word of God.” That means they must, not just be able to
read the words on the page, but to be the medium through which people hear God
speaking to them. That means the reader must be familiar enough with the text
to convey its meaning. If the reader does not know what the words mean, how can
he or she read it with meaning? Lectors are not just readers. They proclaim the
word of God behind the words of the text. The role of the lector, standing in
the pulpit, should be taken as seriously as the priest standing behind the
altar. Incompetence, sloppiness or carelessness in the pulpit or at the altar should
never be acceptable in our churches. Good liturgy strengthens people's faith. Bad liturgy weakens people's faith.
(2) As a
priest, my primary role is to preach. I have a long way to go, but of
all the things I do, I take preaching most seriously. This is my 701st
homily here at Bellarmine alone! I
typically work a minimum of 10-12 hours a week preparing these homilies. As you know, not all priests do that. Several years ago, for instance, I was reading an evaluation that one of our pastors wrote
about one of our soon-to-be-ordained seminarians. He criticized the seminarian for “working too much on his homilies.” He went on to say that he “knew of no
other priest, except for maybe the Vocation Director (me), who spent that much
time on writing homilies.” This time the seminarian is right and the pastor is
wrong! I was never more honored by his criticism. Preaching is not just one of many things a priest does, it is the single
most important thing a priest does!
(3) People
must learn to listen well. The word “liturgy” means “the work of the people.”
In reality, many Catholics still don’t get it. They come to liturgy and put the
whole burden of a meaningful liturgy on the backs of us priests, the musicians
and the liturgical ministers. Many come late, leave early and in between, sit
with their arms folded, never singing or answering the responses or even
mouthing the creed, with an attitude of, “OK, now entertain me, impress me and
inspire me and, if you fail, I’ll blame you and leave here to tell the world
that I don’t get anything out of Mass because of the boring priest and the
lousy music.” The word, “liturgy” means “the work of the people.” We preachers,
presiders, lectors, Eucharistic ministers and musicians are here to “help you pray,” not to “do your
praying for you.” It is your job to pray over the readings before you get here,
get here in time to hear them read and at least sit up and pay close attention
when God’s word is read aloud.
“Humbly
welcome the word that has been planted in you.” Like the parable of the Sower
and the Seed, it is not enough just to have good seed to sow (the word of God),
not enough for the sowers to sow well (the lector and the preacher’s job), but
the ground on which the word is sown must be fertile and receptive. That, my
friends, is your job.Your job is to be good hearers of the word, good welcomers of the word and good doers of the word.
