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Homilies need to devote more attention
to expressing
the glory of the divine nature.
When homilies err
by omission
By John Young
Many homilies which do not make a single false statement nevertheless tend to the perversion of the Catholic Faith. And this often happens without the homilist having any awareness of it. So great is the pressure of neo-modernism that it often plays a big part in shaping a priest’s presentation of the Faith to his people, despite his wish to be orthodox.
This occurs through omitting what should be said, or by a wrong emphasis—as in overstating or understating. Over a long series of homilies (say in a twelve-month period) a pattern of omissions and wrong emphases may be established which effectively portrays a false picture of Christian doctrine and morality. Let us consider this in a number of key areas.
1. A small God. A full appreciation of God’s glory is impossible. Even in heaven, seeing him face to face, we will not fully understand him, for one Word alone completely expresses him, and we cannot generate that Word. God is infinite, existing without a cause, totally independent of any creature. He is truth, goodness and beauty without limit. Without his will holding us in being, we would fall back instantly into the nothingness from which we came. We literally can’t lift a finger without the power he constantly gives us.
We must strive to see his greatness as clearly as we can. If we have a small God in our mind, it is that small God we will project when we talk about God. Demands he makes on us may seem outrageous. It may seem nonsense that a person would commit a mortal sin—a sin deserving hell—for deliberately missing Mass without a good reason. The very idea of a place of everlasting punishment may seem nonsense. Nor will we adore him as whole-heartedly as we should, or abandon ourselves to his will.
Homilies need to devote more attention to expressing the glory of the divine nature. And this should be in the background when other topics are under discussion, for the priest should have it as a vivid part of his own mental landscape, so that it enriches what he says.
Do homilies convey to the hearers, directly or indirectly, the majesty of the triune God? Or do they leave the impression of a rather small, but gently benevolent, being? Does he seem one who could not possibly allow hell, and who would not even require that we make reparation for our sins?
2. Jesus minus divinity. Christianity is full of paradoxes; one of the greatest is found in the Incarnation: Christ is fully God and fully man. The temptation with a paradox is to emphasize one side to the neglect of the other. That happens with the Incarnation. Jesus is presented as though he were merely a good man, in the mode of Buddha or Socrates, although greater than they. He is not seen as “God from God, Light from Light, true God from true God.” Nor is his humanity seen rightly, for the gentler aspects are alone stressed, giving a distorted picture.
These faults are found in many homilies. A hearer with no knowledge of Christianity would never suspect that the One the homilist is talking about is God Incarnate. It is as though the homilist abstracted from Christ’s divinity, wanting to present just his humanity. A result of this is that some things Our Lord did and said become inexplicable, for they are things a good man wouldn’t do or say if he were no more than man. He would not say, “He who loves father or mother more than me, is not worthy of me” (Matt. 10:37).
Even on the human level, the figure who seems to be presented in some homilies is so mild and gentle that an action like driving the traders out of the Temple and overturning their tables becomes inexplicable.
3. The Mother of God. All the stress, only too often, is on the ordinary: a young girl engaged to a young man receives a message which she doesn’t comprehend. Later she lives a routine village life with her husband and child. Little is said about Our Lady’s Immaculate Conception, or about what it must have meant to have no sin whatsoever, or about the glory of this unique creature who is the saint par excellence. Her fulness of grace implies that she had a marvellous insight into the meaning of the events in her life, even though not all obscurity was removed.
She is Mediatrix, she is Mother of the Church, she is Queen of Heaven—and she is the mother of each of us individually, knowing each one and constantly offering each one her guidance. Yet these marvellous realities are rarely accorded the attention they demand. Some homilists don’t even like using her traditional titles—Our Lady, or the Blessed Virgin Mary, or the Blessed Mother, or the Mother of God.
4. The angels. Scripture is full of angels, they are prominent in Tradition, the liturgy celebrates them. Also, they are fascinating: pure spirits with far greater powers than man, yet we resemble them because we are part-spirit. The good angels constantly see God and aid us in reaching the Beatific Vision. The fallen angels are more malicious than the worst human being and are intent on drawing us down to hell with them.
One would think, then, that much would be said about the angels. Instead, we hardly hear them mentioned. Even on their feast days we are usually told little about them. It is as though they were an embarrassment, and no longer relevant to our lives. How many homilies have you heard in the past thirty years that took the angels seriously, showed the good angels in their beauty and glory, and fostered devotion to them? How often have you heard about the devil and his fallen angels: what they are and how they got into their present state, their hatred of the human race and the peril they pose to our salvation?
5. Adam and Eve. Many people take a keen interest in genealogies; they want to trace their ancestors back as far as possible. But we all go back to Adam and Eve, and we actually know a good deal about them, for God has revealed it. Homilies should teach that Adam and Eve were real individuals, should say that we are all descended from them, should relate the facts about original sin and its consequences—including physical death, from which we would have been immune had Adam not sinned.
These things are true, they are interesting, they are relevant. Yet they are generally either ignored or mentioned so vaguely and ambiguously that each person in the congregation can put his own interpretation on them.
6. An appearance of “Scripture alone.” A tragic error of the Protestant Reformers was the claim that Scripture alone is the supreme rule of faith. This leads inevitably to confusion and dissension, and makes it impossible to know accurately what divine Revelation really says. The falsity of the theory has been amply demonstrated by history for over four centuries. Yet some priests leave the impression in their homilies that they support this belief.
One would never guess from their words that divine Revelation is found in Scripture and Tradition, or that the only authentic interpreter of these is the magisterium of the Church. They speak of the Word of God as though it were synonymous with the Bible. They don’t deny Tradition or the magisterium, but their silence leaves the impression in people’s minds, over a period of time, that Scripture alone is the supreme rule of faith.
When explaining the text they rarely do so explicitly in the light of Tradition and official pronouncements of the Church. And when recommending Scripture reading they usually don’t mention the need to read it in the light of Tradition and Catholic teaching. They will even advise their hearers to turn to the Bible for solutions to their difficulties, while leaving the impression that God will give each individual the necessary light to understand what he is reading.
It is vitally important today that Catholics be shown clearly the indispensable place of the Church’s teaching authority. It should be seen as a great gift for which we must thank God. The way it functions should be explained, and also the fact that it is not a question of human authority but of divine authority operating through the Pope and bishops.
7. The Mass and the Real Presence. Homilies should have a lot to say about the Eucharist, for it is the greatest of the sacraments and in each Mass Calvary is made present again. At the consecration the bread and wine are converted into Christ’s real body and blood. Only the appearances, the accidents, remain: what was bread has become his body; what was wine has become the very blood that flows now in the veins of his glorified body in heaven.
How often are these truths clearly taught in homilies? Instead there is usually obscurity and ambiguity, as though the priest were either uncertain what the doctrine is or lacked belief in it. No wonder surveys show an alarming degree of ignorance and error among practicing Catholics about the Real Presence: their views, or lack of them, reflect the typical homilies they have listened to.
An essential theme is the reverence due to the Eucharist. Jesus Christ, true God and true man, is there under the species of bread and wine, and deserves our deepest adoration. Contrast this with the casual attitude shown by so many Catholics. One might expect this question of reverence due to the Most Holy Sacrament would be addressed quite often in homilies. But it isn’t.
8. The Last Things. Eschatology is fascinating, and when treated vividly and realistically can make a riveting homily. In practice, however, it not only isn’t treated that way, but is rarely treated at all. This seems strange, to say the least, because the present life is the brief beginning of our everlasting existence, and our everlasting state depends on what we do here. The realities of death, judgment, hell, purgatory, heaven should be clear and prominent in our view of things.
Hell is hardly mentioned, despite the strong emphasis Christ placed on it, and despite the fact that it is an ever present danger, for we can never be sure of our salvation. The homilist, following the example of Jesus, should teach uncompromisingly about the horror of eternal damnation.
Purgatory is soft-pedaled, as though we were all saints who would go straight to heaven. Instead, it should be made clear that suffering awaits us after death if we are not fully purified before then. It is a suffering lovingly accepted, but it is suffering all the same, with a yearning for heaven greater than any yearning during the present life. Failure to make clear that purgatory is a state of serious suffering is detrimental to the spiritual life of the people, and it must result in less prayers being said for the dead than would otherwise be the case.
Even more surprisingly, little is said about heaven. Why? Partly because most of us, whether priests or laity, are too materialistic in outlook. We live too much for this world, and heaven seems remote and unreal. Another reason relates to what I said at the beginning about a small God (an attitude which is itself related to practical materialism). Heaven, essentially, is the face to face vision of the triune God, with the love and joy that necessarily flow from that vision. Compared with this, no knowledge, no love, no joy is more than a shadow of what heaven will be.
The homilist should often refer to heaven, striving to convey as vividly as possible the wonder of the destiny God offers us. He should reflect, too, on how close it is, for the present life is soon over. An habitual awareness of the heaven which awaits us gives daily life so much more meaning, and makes it far more interesting.
9. Moral questions. The hard issues are usually ignored or glossed over. We are often told in homilies that we must not judge, but this statement is rarely analyzed. We can’t judge the interior dispositions of people, but we can and should judge the morality of different kinds of behavior. A particularly important area to be addressed in homilies is that of sexual morality, both because temptations here are often very strong and because our secular society is constantly bombarding us with warped ideas. But how often do we hear clear statements on the practice of purity? How often do we hear the Church’s teaching on contraception?
If only the injunction of St. Paul were everywhere heeded, “preach the word, be urgent in season and out of season” (2 Tim. 4:2), this would go far to transforming the Catholic people—and indirectly, the whole world.
Mr. John Young, B.Th., is associated with the Cardinal Newman Catechist Centre in Marylands, N.S.W., Australia. He has taught philosophy in three seminaries, and is the author of an introduction to philosophy, Reasoning Things Out, published in the United States by Stella Maris Books, Fort Worth, Tex. Mr. Young writes on philosophical and religious topics for Australian publications. His last article in HPR appeared in July 1999.
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