On a few occasions over the years I have talked with priests or deacons who revealed to me that they did not set aside time to prepare to preach on Sunday at all — they just “let the Spirit guide me in the moment.” Typically, my interior reaction to this is along the lines of, “You’ve gotta be kidding me! How can you expect the Spirit’s guidance if you haven’t done your part!” I recall one priest saying to me, “I don’t pray over my homilies.” Incredulous, my jaw must have dropped. For myself, few things drive me to prayer more profoundly than the terror I feel in the face of having to give another homily!

I once shocked a group of seminarians by beginning a homily to them with the admission, “I really don’t like to preach.” It’s true. As an introvert, I still get clammy palms at the thought of public speaking. Usually my last prayer before forcing myself to the ambo begins, “Lord, I wish you would get somebody else for this job …”

Of course, what is also true is that my terror at the thought of preaching springs from the great respect I have for this ministry. I look into the faces of my hearers, and I see their questions, their goodness, their struggles, their spiritual hunger. They are looking to me for “a word from the Lord,” and this is an awesome privilege. Often, coexisting with my fear, I experience preaching as a precious encounter with the Savior and a mysterious moment when the Holy Spirit uses my talents and humble efforts in ways that go well beyond me. At such times I want to remove my shoes and murmur, “This is holy ground!”

My experience of other Catholic clergy indicates I’m not alone, neither in the terror nor in the humbling ways preaching brings me close to the Lord and to my people. Moreover, my experience also suggests that most preachers do take preparation seriously, even though many of us will admit that the pressures of ministry and, at times, our own sloth lead us to shortchange the time such preparation deserves. And, while it is commonly agreed that Catholic preaching needs improvement, my own assessment is not uniformly bleak. We do have some fine preaching in our churches being done by men of quiet dedication.

Reflect on the Why

There is no easy solution to the shortage of time in ministry. The demands are many, and they can often seem more pressing than preparation of the next homily. I often pause to remind myself that the preparation and delivery of a homily are likely to bring me life, too. More than once my drooping spirit has been propped up by the Spirit’s touch in preparing a homily, not because I’m so eloquent — I’m not; I consider myself only a “B” preacher — but because, fundamentally, this is one of the ways in which God nourishes his people. And that includes me.

It may help us from time to time to do a review of our habits of preparation for preaching. As with anything, we can get in ruts which do not serve us well, and too easily rationalize our failure to give preaching the time it deserves. Below I will sketch my own preparation process for your consideration.

The preamble to my method of preparation is this: Before you do anything else, take a prayerful moment to remind yourself why this is important. You have the privilege of speaking to your hearers, from the scriptural texts for the day, in order to lead them closer to God. Preach for encounter — that is, to make meeting the living God, the Risen Christ, the active Holy Spirit more likely for your hearers. Resolve to know and feed their deepest hunger. Meeting the living God changes us, evoking gratitude, wonder, awe and love. That spontaneous thankfulness is the right ground from which to respond to God, first at the Eucharistic table, and then in a life of service and devotion. So the immediate goal of preaching must always be encounter. The ultimate goal is to form committed disciples, witnesses to the world. Every other purpose or aim we may have for our preaching is secondary to, and dependent upon, this.

My process has ten steps, some of them more time-consuming than others. Find some way to protect several hours over the course of a week to devote to these steps. I try to start no later than Tuesday for the upcoming weekend, and I want to have my homily essentially done by Friday.

Break It Down

1. Prayerfully reflect on your hearers. Preaching is never generic. We are always preaching to a specific and concrete community: a parish, a school, etc. What do you know about them? What is on their minds at this time? What are their needs? In particular, where do they thirst for a word of hope from a God present to them? If you are preaching at more than one Mass on the weekend, consider the distinctive features of each liturgical community, for example, the differences between the older crowds at Saturday 5:30 p.m. or Sunday 8 a.m., and the 10 a.m. Mass full of families. You may have to tweak your message differently for each community. If you are a visiting priest, you may not know the community well, but consider even the little you do know: Your hearers are Americans; they are urban or rural; their socioeconomic identity may be blue-collar, upper middle class, etc. More importantly, they are all human beings, and you know the human condition.

2. Lectio: Slowly and prayerfully read through the scriptural texts two or three times. Note things that strike you, whether it is a reaction of attraction and warmth, or one of puzzlement, fear or unease, or some combination of any of these. Write down words and phrases that jump out at you. Turn these over in your mind, inviting them to question you or shed light on God or on human life. Begin to anticipate how these texts will “land” on your community.

3. Study: Turn to the commentaries. Don’t run to the commentaries too soon. Use them to shed light on the texts, especially anything that leaves you confused or wondering. Commentaries can be useful, mainly in these ways: 1) helping to ensure that you are reading the lections in their proper literary and historical contexts; 2) ruling out some interpretations; and 3) opening up some interpretations that might not have occurred to you. Make these forays into scriptural scholarship part of a larger plan of ongoing formation.

4. Take a break. Step back, give time for things to simmer, time for the Spirit to work on your subconscious. Don’t make the mistake of forcing your preparation into one session. Loosen your grasp on what you’ve done so far, inviting the Spirit’s help. The mind and heart need a bit of time now to defer to the processes of creativity and insight which the Spirit wants to give.

5. Spend time in prayerful homiletic discernment. Sometimes it is not well appreciated that preaching is a ministry of discernment — that is, a disciplined exercise of deference to the Holy Spirit. Ultimately you want to preach not what you want to say, not even what you personally need to hear (though that may be an important clue), but what the Spirit wants to say to these listeners. The question for discernment is this: What does God want to say through this text, or group of texts, at this time and place, to this group of people? How might we get at that message?

a. Identify several possible claims of the text(s) upon you and your hearers. A claim is any reason we might have for paying attention to one of these ancient texts. Make a list. Maybe put this list in your shirt pocket and walk around with it for a day or two, pausing to ask for guidance.

b. From your knowledge of your audience and their needs and hungers, prayerfully discern which of these claims your hearers need to hear at this time. Look for the place where a claim of the text intersects with a pressing spiritual need of your community. This claim will form the central axis of the homily.

c. Once you’ve identified this, write a focus statement, a cogent statement of what the homily is about, what the Spirit wants to say; and a function statement, identifying what you think the Spirit wants to do in and through the hearers through what is said. The timely word of God is always both message and action. And it always invites a response of faith in action from us.

6. Begin to write. As you construct the homily, your task is to give body or three-dimensionality to the focus and function. How to do this?

a. Ask yourself, not what you want to say, but what needs to be heard in order for your discerned message to be fully received. This will include logical progressions of points, as well as possible misunderstandings that need to be cleared away and objections to be overcome.

b. Think about your structure, known as homiletic form. Having a sound structure or flow to preaching is one of the keys to making it memorable and impactful. Good, clearly deployed form leads the hearer on a journey, providing a pathway to follow and giving preaching a kind of narrative quality. Good homilies, like good stories, are knit together through the creation of suspense, keeping the hearer’s attention on board and even building toward a climax. There are scores of different possible structures, as our tradition attests, and the choice should be linked to the nature or tone of your focus and function for this homily. But the most important thing is to have one that sensibly organizes what you believe God wants to say. The alternative is chaos — “pearls but no string,” as one homiletician calls it. Good preaching, like good writing, has a clear communicative plan. Good preachers invest as much care in the how of preaching as they do in the what.

c. Make a balanced appeal to mind (cognition + imagination), heart and will. St. Augustine said that good preaching and catechesis “teach, delight and persuade” to action. He was relying on an Aristotelian understanding of the human person as composed of mind, heart and will. Today we understand that “mind” comprises both cognition and imagination. As the Spirit wants to touch, heal and convert all parts of us, so our preaching should appeal in a balanced way to all of our faculties. It challenges our intellect, opens up the imagination, fires the heart and moves the hands and feet to action.

d. Give special attention to beginnings, transitions and endings. Good beginnings build interest and create intrigue in the mind of the listener. Transitions tell the hearer how the various parts are connected, keeping them on board. Endings are the most important part of all, as this is what will be left ringing in the hearers’ minds as they proceed to the Eucharist and out onto the sidewalk or parking lot. Create your best and most succinct formulation of your point for that sentence capping things off.

e. Consider the kind of delivery this homily is going to demand. Your presence in the homiletic moment is part of the message. A delivery that conveys personal investment and appropriate urgency is always required for the hearer to receive the importance of the Gospel. In addition, delivery can be used to accent certain points or convey subtlety, tenderness, love, passion. You don’t have to be a lion in the pulpit, but good preachers make consistent eye contact and learn how to deploy interesting variations of facial expression, voice, gestures, etc.

7. Edit for adherence to focus and function, unity of message and clarity. Leave plenty of time for revision. Good preachers are ruthless editors who are constantly trying to overcome the “pride of authorship.” You will cut certain things out which are meaningful, things you really like. Put them in a separate file, saved for another time. Refer back to your focus and function and ask yourself how every part, every sentence of your text contributes to the overall purpose of preaching and the specific focus and function of this homily at this time and place. Get some of your hearers in your mind imaginatively, if you can. Ask how each part is likely to work for them, and what might work better. In most circumstances your homily should go seven or eight minutes, and no more than 10. Good preaching says profound things in few words — and no wasted words.

8. Take another break. Loosen your grasp on your text and allow fresh air into your head. Step back and implore the Spirit’s guidance again.

9. Rehearse and revise. Rehearse again, revise again. Rehearse a third time, revise again. You will not discover some of the lack of clarity or non sequiturs in what you’ve written, or the tongue-twisting nature of certain combinations of words, or simpler and better ways to express what you’re trying to say, until you jump from the world of writing to the oral/aural world of the spoken word. Three rounds of rehearsal and revision are minimal. Rehearse in the actual space where you will preach, if you can — it will help you get used to the sound system and the sanctuary’s acoustics, allowing you to choose the right pace, pauses and inflections.

10. Let go and let God. When the moment comes, we have no choice but to let go, and this is an act of the preacher’s humility. “This is what I got,” I will think to myself. “Now, God, do what you can with my poor efforts. Bless and multiply my words to someone’s good. Help them grasp and say yes to your Good News more deeply.” In the end, you are only the servant of God’s desire to communicate with his people. It’s about God, not you. If you are lucky, your people will let you know that “you helped me find God today.” 

FATHER MICHAEL E. CONNORS, CSC, is a pastoral theologian in the theology department at the University of Notre Dame and director of the John S. Marten Program in Homiletics and Liturgics.