One of the frequent questions I remember receiving in the months and years leading up to my priestly ordination was what I was most looking forward to about being a priest. At the very top of the list was offering Mass, but other highlights included
giving blessings and hearing confessions. If I had made a top ten list, preaching might not have been included. I wasn’t particularly dreading it, but it certainly wasn’t something that I was chomping at the bit to do day in and day out.
In the early years of my priesthood, preaching has become both an immense challenge and a true consolation. I take very seriously the part of my office that calls me to open up the scriptures with my people and attempt to draw them closer to the mysteries of the Faith, particularly the Eucharist. Pope Emeritus Benedict XVI once said that all good preaching is Eucharistic in nature, and a homily that fails to segue the congregation from the Word of God into the Body and Blood of Christ has fallen short in at least one essential category. Properly seen, preaching at Mass
is both a bridge between the Liturgy of the Word and the Liturgy of the Eucharist and an actual extension of our belief in the real presence of Christ in the
Blessed Sacrament.
During the season of Lent we are hosting a Holy Hour with benediction between the Masses at OLR on Sunday as a way for people to experience prayer and intimacy with Our Lord in a different way. While praying during this Holy Hour last week (yesterday, based on when I am actually writing this…) I was reflecting on my own preaching and its mission. I was in the middle of beating myself up about what I thought was a completely butchered 9:00 am homily when I finally quieted my heart to hear what Our Lord might have to say about the whole debacle. In a moment of unusual clarity in prayer, I could feel Him telling me one simple and salient message: you have to share your heart with your people.
Although I am no stranger to sharing personal anecdotes and foibles in my homilies, I still consider myself a fairly guarded person. But try as I might, I couldn’t escape the call that Jesus was putting on my heart in that moment. So here we are. I worry about my preaching with unshakeable regularity. If my delivery isn’t as crisp as I want it to be, I fear that I might have gotten in the way of what Jesus wanted to say to you through your priest. If my delivery lands well, I worry that I am moving away from true preaching and into the realm of entertainment and rhetoric. If I had to put a number on it, I would say that I am only happy with about ten percent of the homilies I give. Maybe less.
I want to be abundantly clear that I am not fishing for compliments. The good people of the region have almost always been supportive and loving when it comes not just to my preaching, but to my ministry in general. I say this not because of some defect in you, but only because there is no level of success in preaching that I could achieve that would diminish the burning desire I have to share the fullness of Christ’s love for you and for the whole world.
So in the interest of doing what I think Jesus is asking me to do, here is my heart, specifically when it comes to preaching to you as your spiritual father and as the one charged with nourishing these communities. More than anything else, I want you, the people of this region, to know Jesus’ individual, undying, complete, and perfect love for you. I want you to hear, in the words I speak, whether they are lofty or bumbling from week to week, that Jesus has a plan for your life. He tells us in the Gospel that He came so that we might have life and have it in abundance. In the Eucharist He gives us His very Body, Blood, Soul, and Divinity so that we might have the strength to renounce sin and live in the freedom of the children of God. That is my heart. I am an imperfect instrument, just like everyone else. But if we respond to the great gift He offers us in the Eucharist and live a life dependent on prayer and the sacraments, we can become a furnace of charity that changes our families, our
parishes, and the world. That is my prayer for us this Lent.