One bishop's legacy: how to save the homily.

Kenneth Untener, who died last year of cancer after nearly twenty-five years as bishop of Saginaw, Michigan, was dedicated to the art of preaching. In his book Better Preaching (Paulist), Untener wrote that "when we prepare a homily we participate in the same action of the Spirit that formed the scriptural text itself." He reminded his readers that composing a homily is an essential part of creating the liturgy and that when a priest preaches he is "standing with God."

Untener was constantly trying to improve his sermons and those given by his priests. He would often ask parishioners about the quality of the homilies they heard; he used to keep a pocket notebook so that he could jot down impressions, "Colombo-style." Untener believed that vox populi, vox Dei: the people's voice is the voice of God.

Unfortunately, few bishops have followed Untener's example. Parishioners are rarely asked to comment on homilies, even though, in my experience, they love to talk about them. Modern communications theory teaches that what is being heard is as important as what is being said. Yet homilies, along with Fidel Castro's five-hour speeches, must be one of the few surviving types of "feedback free" discourse on the planet.

Poor homilies have had a serious effect on the church-going habits of Catholics. Too often, I encounter someone who has fled his parish because of the poor quality of the preaching. This is a growing phenomenon in car-borne societies--voting with your wheels. It is a mistake, though, to dismiss this practice as the product of a supermarket or Web-surfer mentality. If parishioners now tend to "shop around," the main reason is the preaching, not the car. The good news is that people seem hungry for astute commentary on the Word.

In Better Preaching, Untener offers preachers practical tips culled from his interviews with members of his diocese. He writes that Americans, who place great value on efficiency, dislike preaching that is labored and long. Spare the listener wordy introductions, especially ones that are not directly relevant to the central message. "Go right to the middle of it," he advises. This makes theological sense, he explains, because the homily needs to flow from the Scriptures. People experience a jarring interruption if the homily is prefaced with an unrelated story, an irrelevant joke, or an announcement.

Another approach that annoys Catholics is rehashing Scripture in the preacher's own words. This, according to Untener, implies that the congregants have not been listening or that they are too thick to understand the readings. An opening in which the preacher explains how he decided what to say is also anathema. People aren't interested in such difficulties. They too are professionals who have to struggle with the disciplines of their trade.

So, "get to the middle of it." The opening line of a poem or a song is intended to announce the work's theme strongly and clearly. The same should be true of a homily. And we know how much trouble writers take to find that perfect opening. Experience has taught me to be wary of the oblique beginning--it frequently confuses a slice of the congregation. Untener's advice is to work on the middle of the homily first, and then both the beginning and the end should come naturally.

Endings are also a problem. Many of the people Untener spoke to mentioned false endings as especially distracting, causing them to focus on how the preacher had "landed the plane" rather than on the message. Untener writes that preachers should always know the last two lines of the homily by heart and should never "wing" an ending. Endings need not be complex; simple is often best. For example, Untener cites a homilist preaching to a group of religious about the ideals of religious life. The preacher's simple, punchy conclusion was: "That's the witness of your life, and we're grateful for it." Uplifting too.

Not surprisingly, brevity and clarity of thought were ranked highly by Untener's respondents. To keep homilies brief, Untener recommends developing one single idea or "pearl" rather than pursuing several strands. "There's no sense in saying more if they'll hear less," Untener writes. The call is for a single, elaborated point, but a point of some depth. Giving a homily is a labor--of love, of study, prayer, discussion, and thought.

"Depth" is one area where Untener's respondents were particularly astute. One of the more sobering comments was: "He's a good speaker. It's just that he's got nothing to say." There will be no depth in homilies without corresponding depth in the preacher: spiritual, intellectual, and cultural. "As I listen to homilists, I think I can tell whose world is large and whose is small. I can guess who reads and who doesn't," one person remarked. People want well-read, reflective, and prayerful preachers. At the same time, they want preaching that connects with their lives.

Untener also recommends that homilists write out the homily to force clarity. He does not advise that the homily be read aloud--few can do that convincingly. But he would agree with La Rochefoucauld's seventeenth-century dictum: "True eloquence consists in saying all that is required and only what is required." Untener comments that "Many a mediocre homily was one step away from greatness: editing."

Boredom is the great enemy of preaching. Sadly, the preacher is often in the unhappy position of manufacturing his own foe. Untener is merciless on the responsibility of the preacher to maintain the audience's attention. "A homily becomes too long at the point where people stop listening," he remarks baldly. He also refers to the "fidget level" as an index of audience attention. The more people fidget, the less likely they are listening. When you can hear a pin drop (how infrequently that happens), you have really got them.

David Buttrick, the Protestant homiletics teacher, has said that it is the responsibility of the preacher, and no one else, to find and focus the attention of the congregation. Who else is there to do it? To blame the congregation for its short attention span is a cop-out. Untener's acid test of whether a homily has beaten boredom and hit home is whether it is remembered six months later. It seems there is no escape for us preachers! We bore our listeners at our peril.

Another of Untener's recommendations yet to take hold is his maxim: "The bigger the event, the shorter the homily. Homilies on these events ... are often unremembered." How true, we preachers might say, but something inside nags us to lend dignity to the bigger event by a longer homily and not to "downgrade" it with brevity. Still, the fact remains that at a ceremony such as the Easter Vigil, which is so crowded and visually vivid, the chance that a long homily will be remembered is slight.

Walter Brueggemann (Finally Comes the Poet) argues that in American culture, the gospel "is a truth widely held, but a truth greatly reduced. It is a truth that has been flattened, trivialized, and rendered inane." But this does not mean that the thirst for an arresting and prophetic message, couched in fresh, poetic language, has been extinguished. In fact, like Untener, I have found that the topic of preaching is never a conversation-killer. On the contrary, it turns out to be a subject which engages people, fires them up. After all, since most people have experienced preaching, their comments are often most enlightening. If only our homilies interested people as much as the subject of preaching, then we would be doing well. People thirst and hunger for the Good News, but not for moralizing. They want a well-introduced, well thoughtout, and prayed-over pearl, one that ends with a good summation and lifts them up. We need to preach better. And that means better preparation and real feedback.

Christopher Chatteris, SJ, teaches homiletics and study methodology at St. Joseph's Theological Institute in KwaZulu-Natal, South Africa.