Deacons preaching homilies

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Actually the Faithful need to hear more apologetic and political type homilies that will help them deal with the current situation we find ourselves with the attack from the liberal left on the family and religious liberty. As it stands politics plays a part in spiritual warfare. As far as preaching the Gospel, preach the whole Gospel.

Jesus said…Neither do I condemn you (compassion), go and sin no more (conversion).

Compassion for this life, conversion for the next.
 
yankeesouth said:
Actually the Faithful need to hear more apologetic and political type homilies that will help them deal with the current situation we find ourselves with the attack from the liberal left on the family and religious liberty.
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The problem is that you don’t know what kind of “apologetic and political type homily” you’re going to get, unless it’s a well-known priest like Fr. Z or a bishop giving the homily, in which case the person has likely written some articles, books, blog posts, given some interviews etc giving you a good idea of what you’re going to hear.

Based on your past posts, I guarantee you that if you had to listen to some of the “political” homilies I’ve heard (fortunately they were few and far between), you would not be happy with them. I’m a moderate and I myself wasn’t happy with them, you appear to be more conservative than me so you’d probably be doubly unhappy.

The homily at Mass, at least at the regular Sunday Mass, is supposed to provide some common ground for everybody to think and be united at least for a hour of worship. It doesn’t have to be namby-pamby 70s burlap banner love gunk in order to do that. However, making an impassioned speech from the pulpit on what Trump is doing with immigration policy is not the way to go. Just my opinion. (And yes, I heard a deacon do this.)

I have heard parish priests preach moderate sermons on defending the family and our religious liberty, and they managed to do it without getting too deep in the weeds. Most people in USA regardless of politics are in favor of religious liberty and family as general concepts, although they may interpret them differently from person to person.
 
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You might be interested in Dr. Brant Pitre’s website where he has a feature called The Mass Readings Explained. I know of a couple of priests that use his service to help form their homilies. It is a subscription service but well worth the price imo. You will get two free weeks to check it out.

catholicproductions.com

Mass Readings Explained Year C

catholicproductions.com catholicproductions.com
 
Interesting. I never heard of this method but I can see how many of the priests I regularly listen to use it.

I do have a question for the deacons on here about the 7-10 hours of prep. If it takes that long to prepare a homily, then how do the priests who say daily Mass and include a little homily for each Mass deal with it? In my quest to find convenient daily Masses, I get to hear a lot of different priests say Mass, and some of them will just skip the homily altogether for weekday Masses, but most of them will say one, and some of them will say a fairly involved one. One particular priest I know gives a homily 5 days out of the week during most weeks. If he spent 7 hours prepping for each homily, he wouldn’t be able to get everything else on his agenda done.
 
Thanks for this. And I am sorry, I didn’t mean to take over this thread and make it about me.
 
I personally know several priests that have been priests many years. They have been through the cycles enough times that they can give a homily on the readings without preparation. And many times, they are not bad at all.
Our pastor usually does this with weekday masses, while still preparing his Sunday homily.
I have been a deacon for just a few years now, and I have found several times when I was able to give a short reflection during a weekday mass or communion service without much preparation because I have given a Sunday homily on the same reading previously. But preparation for a Sunday also takes me a good 7 or 8 hours.
 
That’s pretty much the same thing the minister at my home church does as well. I think that’s a big reason my wife likes him so much, especially the application portion.
 
Tis_Bearself said:
I do have a question for the deacons on here about the 7-10 hours of prep. If it takes that long to prepare a homily, then how do the priests who say daily Mass and include a little homily for each Mass deal with it? In my quest to find convenient daily Masses, I get to hear a lot of different priests say Mass, and some of them will just skip the homily altogether for weekday Masses, but most of them will say one, and some of them will say a fairly involved one. One particular priest I know gives a homily 5 days out of the week during most weeks. If he spent 7 hours prepping for each homily, he wouldn’t be able to get everything else on his agenda done.
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I also spend plenty of time prepping for a Homily, and you ask a good question. I preach one weekend each month and also at our Tuesday evening service. As was noted the time range for a homily at a weekend Mass is 8-12 minutes, while for a week day Mass it is much shorter. For an evening week day Mass I will read the daily readings early in the morning, and then do a little research and think about it all day. Recently I had prepared for a Tuesday evening Mass and when Father showed up he said that he would say a few words. He looked at the readings and then gave a homily that was similar to what I was going to preach. Like you asked, how do they do it? I will say this, he is a good homilist and has been ordained for over 45 years while I was ordained just over a year ago.
 
I know the older priests can practically preach a homily in their sleep, but the priest I mentioned who preaches 5 pretty involved homilies per week is a younger priest assigned to the local Newman Center, where he has lots of duties weekly. He seems to be good at coming up with stories from his own daily life to base the homily off, like he’ll talk about when he was a child in the 80s or some errand he ran that week. His daily homilies easily go 5 to 7 minutes.
 
Tis_Bearself said:
In my experience, the two biggest “mistakes” I see are (1) talking too long (over about 10-12 minutes is usually too long)
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We had a priest sent to the homiletics institute when I was growing up (which was also used as a way to “dry out” priests when necessary).

He left as a typical so-so homilist, and came back very good.

Chatting, he said that the most important thing they taught was “seven minutes”–and that a priest was wasting his breath after that.

There are priests who can hold attention longer than hat, but that is a particular skill (my current pastor is one [in fact, he at one point was invited to speak at a black church that had converted to RC in Chicago (iirc), and told that if he didn’t preach for at least 50 minutes, he was unlikely to be invited back . . . ]).
Tis_Bearself said:
I do have a question for the deacons on here about the 7-10 hours of prep. If it takes that long to prepare a homily, then how do the priests who say daily Mass and include a little homily for each Mass deal with it?
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Several years ago, when I just got back, I got a call asking “what are you doing” from a for-profit college.

“Uh, sitting down to a pork steak dinner?”

It seems that after discussing the possibility of my teaching, and what days I was available, they had assigned me to a class–but forgot to tell me, and it had just started.

I had taught the class enough times elsewhere to simply show up and teach it cold (as I could do for mom topics in the field).

Years an years on the same cycle, and a priest is likely to be able too do a short homily on any Gospel in the cycle off the cuff.
Tis_Bearself said:
know the older priests can practically preach a homily in their sleep, but the priest I mentioned who preaches 5 pretty involved homilies per week
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Our priest often needs to note that he can’t stay long after liturgy, as he needs to do a noon Mass for an RC parish. He also happily notes when the Gospel is the same and he can use the same homily . . .

hawk
 
I have been ordained for 14 years and preach several times per month – usually one Sunday and a couple of daily Masses. Most months I also give a homily during some time outside of Mass (baptisms, wakes, funerals and weddings). I have worked for the Church full-time for 12 years, so I do more preaching than a typical deacon.
Over time, you simply have covered all or most of the Sundays of the year – I keep my homilies and know I have at least one for every week (including Solemnities like Christmas and Easter). I have homilies for every Gospel reading for Funerals, and for Weddings, and Baptisms (the more popular Gospel readings I have literally preached on dozens of times).
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For a daily Mass I prepare a shorter homily; and do it more often extemporaneously (remember the daily Gospel readings are duplicates of those used in the three-year cycle).

Something less tangible is simply the fact that some men (both priests and deacons alike) are much better public speakers than others. Those with backgrounds in speech and debate or careers in sales / marketing, or education or law tend to become better preachers because of their training and talent for forensics.

ALL preachers can improve by taking advantage of continuing education provided, as well as working on their public speaking in general (like by joining Toastmasters).

Blessed are those parishes where their ministers strive to ever improve their preaching ability,
Deacon Christopher
 
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