Length of homily?

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A good homily should be about 7 minutes and about Jesus.

(Shamefully stolen from a priest friend.)
 
While I do agree with what others have said about there being no perfect formula, having experienced good and bad long and short homilies, my personal rule is one page. Unless you’re particularly gifted brevity is the way to go with homily preparation.
 
St Augustine and St Leo the Great’s homilies appear to be at least 2 hrs long. Justin Martyr describes the homily at Mass “as long as there is time for” before the Liturgy of the Eucharist begins.

So I would say any number put on a homily length is more cultural than required. Probably between 0 and 4 hours.
 
Evan said:
St Augustine and St Leo the Great’s homilies appear to be at least 2 hrs long. Justin Martyr describes the homily at Mass “as long as there is time for” before the Liturgy of the Eucharist begins.

So I would say any number put on a homily length is more cultural than required. Probably between 0 and 4 hours.
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I think 3.5 hours is fine. 4 hours is just obnoxious. 😉
 
A priest talking to us in the seminary once said if you can talk for 5 minutes and do it well, that’s far better than talking for 5 minutes and doing it badly - not every priest is a skilled homilist. The context also needs to be taken into account both in terms of the audience as well as their other commitments (do they need to get back to work for example).
 
The doctor of “Homilies” usually have 15 min. length of homily. But rather, people who lose interest in homily are the most ones who don’t listen the most.
 
The length of the homily is not important.

Long homilies at my local parish Church here in Las Pinas would not be practical as there are 10 Masses every Sunday to accommodate the high attendance.
 
I’d suppose it should be as long as it takes to get the point across.
 
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