Senior liturgical officials at the Vatican have emphasised that homilies at Mass must not be boring.
The Congregation for Divine Worship and the Discipline of the Sacraments has issued a new Homiletic Directory, which was launched on February 10.
Congregation head Cardinal Robert Sarah said for many Catholics, the homily, experienced as “beautiful or awful, interesting or boring”, is their basis for judging an entire Mass.
While the homily is not the essential part of the Mass, he said, it does help to ensure (or discourage) the participation of the congregation.
The homily, he said, “makes demands of he who pronounces it”, and the new document should help priests to make proper preparation for preaching.
Congregation secretary Bishop Arthur Roche agreed that it is important that a homily not be boring.
If one looks at the homilies of Pope Francis, he said, “there is nothing boring. There is always something that challenges people. This is the point”.
“The responsibility of the [preacher] is to bring the reality of God’s life into a practical application with the reality of people’s lives,” Bishop Roche said.
The directory referred to Pope Francis’s exhortation in Evangelii Gaudium that homilies should be brief.
Pope Benedict XVI had previously asked the congregation to produce the directory after requests from two previous synods.
The directory reaffirms that only ordained ministers – bishops, priests or deacons – are to deliver the homily at Mass.
“Well-trained lay leaders can also give solid instruction and moving exhortation, and opportunities for such presentations should be provided in other contexts”, but not at the moment after the readings and before the liturgy of the Eucharist at Mass, it says.
The 156-paragraph directory has two main sections – on the homily in its liturgical setting and on the art of preaching – as well as two appendices.
It offers suggestions for how to tie readings to Church teaching on a variety of theological and moral topics.
But it emphasises that the homily is not a catechetical instruction, even if catechesis is an important dimension of the homily.
And, while the preacher’s personal experience can help illustrate a point, “the homily should express the faith of the Church and not simply the priest’s own story”.
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