POPE Francis has urged priests to deliver rousing homilies – not homilies that put parishioners to sleep.
The pontiff delivered this message during his Angelus address in St. Peter’s Square yesterday, while also reminding that re-familiarising one’s self with the Gospel brings God’s joy anew.
Earlier, Pope Francis celebrated Mass marking Sunday of the Word of God in St. Peter’s Basilica, formally installing women and men in the ministries of lector and catechist.
During his Angelus address, Francis recalled how today’s Gospel presents the beginning of Jesus’ preaching and how it underscored the importance of inspiring people with the Word of God and engaging their interest.
Jesus, he suggested, captivated everyone’s interest, and when preaching His Word today, it has to do the same.
“The Word of God,” the Jesuit Pope highlighted, “is always ‘today.’
It begins with a ‘today’: when you read the Word of God, a ‘today’ begins in your soul, if you understand it well.”
Sometimes it happens, the Pope lamented, “that our sermons and our teachings remain generic, abstract, not touching the soul and the life of the people.”
Asking why this is, he responded it is because “they lack the power of this today,” “do not move the heart,” and “everything remains as before.”
“What Jesus fills with meaning by the power of the Spirit, is today,” Francis said, noting that this ‘today’ “speaks to you.”
“Even many homilies – I say it with respect but with pain – are abstract, and instead of awakening the soul, they put it to sleep.
“When the faithful start looking at their watches – “when is this going to end?” – they put the soul to sleep,” Pope Francis said.
Preaching, the Pope said, runs the risk of presenting the Gospel in a detached way “as if it were outside time, far from reality.” And this is not the way, the Pope said.
“A word in which the power of today does not pulsate,” he warned, “is not worthy of Jesus and does not help people’s lives.”
Francis said that if those who preach want to give lectures or conferences, “let them do so, but elsewhere, not at the time of the homily, where they must give the Word in a way that rouses hearts.”
A full copy of Pope Francis’ homily can be found here.
