About 11 years ago when I was
assigned to be the Vocations Director for the Archdiocese, I started going
around from church to church every Sunday to preach about priestly vocations
and the importance of praying for vocations.
At the same time I also served as the Master of Ceremonies for one of
our auxiliary bishops, so there were weekends when I would not preach. While I thoroughly enjoyed my time with Bishop
Noonan and visiting different churches in the tri-county area, I really missed
preaching on Sundays to my parishioners on the readings of the day. So in an effort to stay sharp, every weekend
I would write a brief homily as if I was going to preach it to one of the two
parishes that I had served at. Sometime in
2006, I started emailing these homilies to a few friends. Late that year, I
started posting my homilies on (ready for this?) Myspace of all places. Soon the email list got longer, I moved from
Myspace to Facebook like everyone else, and by the time I returned to parish
life in January 2009, I was writing, or better yet transcribing my homilies
every single week.
More often than not, here is how
the process would go. I rarely write my
entire homily before I preach. I usually
start thinking and praying about what I want to preach about in the middle of
the week. By Friday or Saturday, I have
4 or 5 things that I want to mention in my homily that I jot down on a post it
note and I put it in my pocket. By
Sunday morning I (usually) know what I want to communicate during those
precious 7-10 minutes during Mass that I get to share the Word of God with my
parishioners. I seldom take the post it note out of my pocket unless there’s a
quote on it that I don’t want to butcher, and then when I start preaching, it’s
all up to the Holy Spirit from there.
Every Sunday night around 9pm, I
would sit down in my room with my laptop with only that post it note as my
reference and I would transcribe what I preached that day. Only on very few occasions would I write down
the entire homily before I actually preached it. I really enjoy writing. I really enjoy communicating the Good News of
Jesus Christ through the different social mediums at our disposal. For me it’s like a journal of my priestly journey
of faith and how I communicate that faith to the people of God.
So I did this every Sunday night,
except when I was on vacation or out of town, for 10 years. I don’t know how many homilies I have
written. I have on occasion peeked back
and looked at what I wrote in 2006 or 2007 and cringed at what I had
transcribed. Sometimes I would wonder if
this weekly Sunday night routine was an exercise in vanity, but the comments I
have received over the years have been so uplifting and not surprisingly, some
of those positive comments are in response to homilies that I don’t think are
that good. Just another proof that the
Holy Spirit is in charge when I stand in my church to preach or sit in front of
a keyboard to type.
Last June, I started to feel rust
and started to get weary from my Sunday evening routine. It was a lot easier to do when I wasn’t a
pastor. On June 5th of last
year, I wrote a very personal and heartfelt homily to my students who were
about to graduate from 8th grade and by extension to all the
students I have ever taught. I still
remember preaching that homily about coming home and staying home with my heart
in my hand. When I put it in writing
later that evening and shared it with a few friends, I realized that it was one
of those rare homilies that I was (almost) completely satisfied with. So I posted it, and thought to myself, “if
that’s the last homily I ever post, that’s fine with me.” You see, one of the primary reasons I posted
my homilies in the first place was to reach out to those who have wandered far
from the Church. Whenever I would sit
down and write, I would always have my kids in the back of my mind praying that
they would read what were essentially love letters from God to them.
That mini-sabbatical lasted barely
two months. The people on my email list
asked me to keep on writing which I did.
But the New Year rolled around, and I started noticing that at least the
written version of my homilies didn’t have the same spirit they once had. I was doing this more out of duty than out of
passion. So after returning from the
March for Life in January, I wrote one final homily for the closing Mass of a
retreat we hosted for families with children with special needs…and then I stopped. I needed a break. I did not want this labor of love to be a
routine. Some friends pleaded with me to
keep writing, but this time I stood firm because I needed the break. Over the past few months, the homilies I have
preached in my parish have been more heart to hearts with my parishioners as we
endeavor to grow closer to Christ. They
have been probably the most personal homilies I have ever given. They are homilies that “you just gotta be
there.”
This doesn’t mean that I won’t
return to this medium again. In fact,
one of the reasons I decided to write these lines was because on Tuesday I got
an email from our editor in the Archdiocese that she was going to publish that
homily I mentioned earlier from June of last year. The power of the written word is not lost on
me especially when that power is amplified because I am writing about the Living
Word of God. I wish I could have you all
in my pews every single Sunday, but I implore you to listen to the words of
your priests in your parishes. Yes I
know that some are more eloquent than others, but listen because the Lord is communicating
to you through these chosen ones of His.
There is more power in a homily heard and experienced during the
celebration of the Eucharist than in any words that I can possibly write to you
on Sunday nights.
So for now, “I’m on a break” from
writing…not from preaching the gospel. Pray
for me. Pray for each other. And above all, pray for your priests!
