Garrison Keillor once described a type of sermon that is like
watching paint dry on a barn. Several years ago while
observing paint dry in a now-forgotten parish in a far-off
diocese (to be clear, Father Mosimann, this was another
diocese), I glanced around at my fellow laymen and saw that
most of them had adopted recumbent poses: One in seeming
prayer had folded his hands and closed his eyes; another
leaned forward, elbows on knees, holding his temples like
Edvard Munch's subject in "The Scream."
I think I glimpsed in these slumped men the homily shopper I
used to be.
Now, I thank God that the homily simply survives in what Pope
Francis calls our consumerist "throwaway" culture. I thank
God for the priests (and deacons) who step into the pulpit
more than 1,000 times a week for daily and Sunday Masses in
the Arlington Diocese alone. While everything around us is
being data-mined, focus-grouped, digitized, politicized and
monetized, the homily lives.
The homily is like dark matter: Physical laws stop short of
it. Google algorithms will never decode it. The homily is an
anti-virtual reality, a Galapagos archipelago hosting
exquisite ecosystems. The next media revolution will boom and
bust, but the pulpit will stand.
If Paul spoke of Christ as a "stumbling block" and
"foolishness" to the world, then many homilies have struck me
as Christ-like in both regards. I have stumbled so many times
over them. As the son of a prosecutor, I tested premises and
looked for the burden of proof. Grandson of an Evangelical
preacher, I held sermons up to the test of time. One-time
theology student, I cross-checked and second-guessed Father's
sources. Those were some interesting years of homily
consumption. But what a waste.
The homily is, after all, a breathtaking crossroads between
earth and sky, land and sea, word and silence. It can be a
place of unbearable lightness. Standing there, one looks back
at the road just traveled - the Confiteor, Gloria, Old
Testament, psalm, epistle and Gospel. Father pauses with us
at this junction, comments on the cliffs we have just scaled.
Memory awakens the heart. Gratitude returns.
And just ahead
Father will leave the pulpit and
we'll trek on toward the source and summit. Now the markings
on the path have grown faint. A fog encircles. Voices recede.
The clouds break for a moment to reveal azure sky - or is it
an ocean? The beating of our hearts is now almost audible.
In all those years I hunted the homily for structure and
"relevance," "authenticity" and succinctness, but the Lord
was in fact hunting me, preparing me to touch His Body on the
summit. I evaded Him, hiding in the clefts of my ego. While I
appraised the "worth" of these homilies, Jesus was passing me
by.
But then one day several years ago I saw at the pulpit not a
professional speaker but a man who had left his nets behind
him and given everything to follow an upstart Jewish
carpenter. His words suddenly flowed from a different place.
He spoke to me in the person of Christ on the words of Christ
just before he was to hold Christ.
And I thanked God for this priest and for every priest.
Gratitude overwhelmed my prosecution. I dropped my weapons,
metrics and nets. And the homily-as-product and barn paint
were suddenly gone. I saw only a man, a mountain guide
inviting me to rest for a few minutes before we reached the
summit of Mt. Everest. I saw a man who was up half the night
with a dying stranger at the hospital. I saw a man acquainted
with grief, mystery and encounter.
Instead of hunting or shopping for homilies, I try now to
receive the free gift of the homily as it is - as the Holy
Spirit has prepared Father and is teaching him at that moment
what he should say (cf. Lk 12:12). "Just as the homilist must
be immersed in study and reflection on the Scriptures to
proclaim the Gospel faithfully," Bishop Loverde together with
his brother U.S. bishops affirmed in Preaching the Mystery
of Faith: The Sunday Homily, "so too should members of
the congregation who listen to the homily do what they can to
receive properly and savor the biblical message."
I rest my prosecution. It's time to savor what the Holy
Spirit has prepared.
Johnson, a husband and father of five, is Arlington Bishop
Paul S. Loverde's delegate for evangelization and media.