An open letter to priest- and deacon-homilists (most of whom will never see it)

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DaveBj

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You have been given an extremely valuable gift – a block of 15-20 minutes of precious time for proclaiming the Word of God, catechizing the faithful, and attracting those outside the Church. Please, please, PLEASE don’t use this valuable resource for announcements, fund-raising, or other activities, other than preaching the word.

Last week we had a minute or so of announcements, followed by 7-ish minutes of fund-raising for a new statue of Mary to be placed on the school grounds. Finally we got about 7 minutes of homily. The homily was good (our pastor is a good preacher), but it should have been 15-20 minutes long, not just 7 minutes, in order to do justice to the readings.
 
The most average person finds 20 minutes too long to listen to everything in that time and most Christians are included in that average length of time. Today our visiting Archdeacon finished before I had finished sucking the extra strong mint. Though I was suspicious when he said Amen, did he mean it or was he about to go on. This time he meant it. My brain wanders and come back and wanders and come back through the average length of sermon but hate them shorter as for me wandering and coming back is part of it and usually the priest is saying the same thing, just in a different way to capture as many people as he can and a skillful priest will do that without the congregation noticing. 20 minutes is standard agreeable there but more than likely he has said his main point before then and using the time to educate about the main point for some will need that education. Most will need that education otherwise he wouldn’t be saying it at all hopefully.

We have our annoucements at the end most of the time and the peace well before communion. Don’t write it here though, have a friendly chat with your priest if you wanting him to change though it is his right to do as he sees fit I guess. We don’t have that problem and he really does use the sermon time to teach as of is meant to do. Please contact your priest about this rather than just let of steam here 👍
 
We divide the announcements and homily at our church. The homily is exactly that. We have the announcements at the end of Mass, including sometimes a lay person talking about our encouraging attendance at the latest fundraiser. It works well! We do have an annual “State of the Parish” talk once a year, but that seems really appropriate as we need to respond to that, also, as a community.
 
DaveBj said:
You have been given an extremely valuable gift – a block of 15-20 minutes of precious time for proclaiming the Word of God, catechizing the faithful, and attracting those outside the Church. Please, please, PLEASE don’t use this valuable resource for announcements, fund-raising, or other activities, other than preaching the word.

Last week we had a minute or so of announcements, followed by 7-ish minutes of fund-raising for a new statue of Mary to be placed on the school grounds. Finally we got about 7 minutes of homily. The homily was good (our pastor is a good preacher), but it should have been 15-20 minutes long, not just 7 minutes, in order to do justice to the readings.
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In formation for the diaconate we are hammered with the 8 minute rule.

We are told time and again that homily should never be more than 8 minutes.

But neither should the time after the Gospel be used for announcements or fund raising, or anything BUT the homily.
 
We are very fortunate to have homilies reserved for homilies and brief announcements are made after the final blessing.
 
Announcements are at the end of Mass at my parish.

But I understand why the fundraising often IS the homily. The homily should usually be about the readings but sometimes it is about other instruction for being a Christian . Fundraising is a kind of instruction on the duties of being a parishioner. It’s not just an announcement. And unfortunately an awful lot of people don’t stick around (either mentally or physically) to hear announcements.

(I hate fundraising too.)
 
Today he went a little short of 21 minutes, of which 4:30 was announcements and fundraising :mad:
 
triumphguy said:
In formation for the diaconate we are hammered with the 8 minute rule.

We are told time and again that homily should never be more than 8 minutes.

But neither should the time after the Gospel be used for announcements or fund raising, or anything BUT the homily.
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8 minutes - wow :eek:

That doesn’t seem long enough to make a point. In many non-Catholic churches, the sermon is around a half-hour or so and people seem to like it.

Personally, a pithy 15 minutes or so seems about right to me.
 
Beachcomber said:
8 minutes - wow :eek:

That doesn’t seem long enough to make a point. In many non-Catholic churches, the sermon is around a half-hour or so and people seem to like it.

Personally, a pithy 15 minutes or so seems about right to me.
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Non-Catholic services don’t have a 35-40 minute liturgy on top of their half-hour sermon of course. In my experience, anything after 8 or so minutes is either repetitive or more words that weigh down the original message - unless the homilist is truly exceptional, and those are really rare.
 
Tarpeian_Rock said:
Non-Catholic services don’t have a 35-40 minute liturgy on top of their half-hour sermon of course.
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That’s not necessarily true. I was a Protestant for 34 years. I spent years in Southern Baptist, Pentecostal, Methodist, and Episcopalian circles. While the typical Sunday service time (with the sermon included) would vary among these various traditions, in none of these traditions would the typical Sunday service be shorter than an hour, at least in my experience. Furthermore, while Southern Baptists and and Pentecostals do not have a particularly “liturgical” form of worship, they do have an order of worship that is fairly regular from one week to the next. In my experience with Southern Baptists, the sermon would generally last 20-30 minutes, and the entire service about an hour to an hour and 15 minutes. In my experience among Pentecostals, the sermon would last about 30-40 minutes, and the entire service about and hour and a half.
 
RyanBlack said:
That’s not necessarily true. I was a Protestant for 34 years. I spent years in Southern Baptist, Pentecostal, Methodist, and Episcopalian circles. While the typical Sunday service time (with the sermon included) would vary among these various traditions, in none of these traditions would the typical Sunday service be shorter than an hour, at least in my experience. Furthermore, while Southern Baptists and and Pentecostals do not have a particularly “liturgical” form of worship, they do have an order of worship that is fairly regular from one week to the next. In my experience with Southern Baptists, the sermon would generally last 20-30 minutes, and the entire service about an hour to an hour and 15 minutes. In my experience among Pentecostals, the sermon would last about 30-40 minutes, and the entire service about and hour and a half.
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As a charismatic/Pentecostal protestant I was in plenty of services where the length of the sermon was dictated by the fact that they were using 90-minute cassette tapes, and frequently the end of the message didn’t make it onto the tape. I’m fine with 15-20 minutes. I might have concerns about the spiritual maturity of someone who can’t stand a sermon longer than 8 minutes. In my book, that’s pretty pathetic.
 
You can say a great deal in 8 minutes.

You can also spend an hour saying nothing.
 
We’ve had several threads lately where the length of homilies have been debated. But this sums it up very well from my perspective:
triumphguy said:
You can say a great deal in 8 minutes.

You can also spend an hour saying nothing.
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Thank-you!!!
 
triumphguy said:
In formation for the diaconate we are hammered with the 8 minute rule.

We are told time and again that homily should never be more than 8 minutes.

But neither should the time after the Gospel be used for announcements or fund raising, or anything BUT the homily.
Click to expand...
It would be interesting to know where that 8 minute rule comes from? Seems odd that it would be viewed as a universal standard. Some homilists for a variety of reasons are difficult to listen to for 8 minutes. Some can peach for 30+ minutes and you want more.

Maybe that 8 minute rule need to be reviewed?
 
DaveBj said:
As a charismatic/Pentecostal protestant I was in plenty of services where the length of the sermon was dictated by the fact that they were using 90-minute cassette tapes, and frequently the end of the message didn’t make it onto the tape. I’m fine with 15-20 minutes. I might have concerns about the spiritual maturity of someone who can’t stand a sermon longer than 8 minutes. In my book, that’s pretty pathetic.
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Indeed, or the preparation of the homilist.
 
Remember that sometimes a few words can mean an awful lot! Look at the Our Father prayer!
 
It really depends on whether there is something to say or if the homily has gone into filler material. I have been in a parish that seemed to have a rule that homilies would last around twenty minutes. No matter who delivered it, pastor, deacon or anyone other than a visiting priest, it would be around twenty minutes. Most times, the material just wasn’t there and it became obvious that the homily was being stretched.

In my opinion, that is a mistake. If you look around and see lots of people nodding off, it’s time to wrap it up. The opposite is true if a homily is artificially truncated. If a priest or a deacon has something that needs to be said, a hard a fast rule that cuts it off seems inappropriate.
 
triumphguy said:
In formation for the diaconate we are hammered with the 8 minute rule.

We are told time and again that homily should never be more than 8 minutes.

But neither should the time after the Gospel be used for announcements or fund raising, or anything BUT the homily.
Click to expand...
During formation you must comply with the guidelines of the program. Do your best to go through the process just like your formatters ask. But when you are ordained and are assigned to a parish, remember that the Holy Spirit is in charge and through your pastor He will give you more guidance.

The goal should be to prepare a message, not stick to the clock. Sometimes my homily is 8 minutes, sometimes it is 18; I’ve been know to give a 25 minute homily rarely. The people and your pastor will let you know if you prepared properly and followed the HS or not, that I can assure you.

This is one rule of thumb you should follow, for every minute of your homily there should be at least an hour of preparation.

As far as the OP’s point, I agree with it whole heartedly, many pastors feel the need to campaign for money to build a building or whatever project they may want at this time. This is sacred time, not fund raising time. A neighboring parish pastor is in the process of building a parish hall for meetings and CCD and every time we go there we hear about the fundraising and how much more they need. He got quite a few complaints about his homilies being about fundraising so now he “updates” the parish after the closing prayer, so you get a 10 minute update at the end of Mass.
 
Lapey said:
During formation you must comply with the guidelines of the program. Do your best to go through the process just like your formatters ask. But when you are ordained and are assigned to a parish, remember that the Holy Spirit is in charge and through your pastor He will give you more guidance.

The goal should be to prepare a message, not stick to the clock. Sometimes my homily is 8 minutes, sometimes it is 18; I’ve been know to give a 25 minute homily rarely. The people and your pastor will let you know if you prepared properly and followed the HS or not, that I can assure you.

This is one rule of thumb you should follow, for every minute of your homily there should be at least an hour of preparation.

As far as the OP’s point, I agree with it whole heartedly, many pastors feel the need to campaign for money to build a building or whatever project they may want at this time. This is sacred time, not fund raising time. A neighboring parish pastor is in the process of building a parish hall for meetings and CCD and every time we go there we hear about the fundraising and how much more they need. He got quite a few complaints about his homilies being about fundraising so now he “updates” the parish after the closing prayer, so you get a 10 minute update at the end of Mass.
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It’s 2013, after all. These updates could be in the bulletin and/or on the parish website.

Our previous pastor was a reverent celebrant but his one foible was that while he did the announcements after the closing prayer, it was almost reading the entire bulletin. With our new pastor, the pastoral council and the pastor have reached a compromise where announcements are for “emergency” purposes – an event scheduled for that day had to be canceled or something did not make the deadline for the bulletin. Otherwise, the brief announcement is to pick up a bulletin on the way out (BTW, they are NOT available before Mass and are handed out by ushers, not left on a table) an/or check the website for info.
 
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