Homily: Feast of John Chrysostom

Feast of John Chrysostom (Lk. 6:39-46) “What did he Say?”

The preaching of Jesus seems disjointed at times. Jesus seems to bounce from one subject to another in the Gospel of Luke. A couple of reasons are given by Scripture scholars for this.

One theory is that the Gospels are made up of sayings of Jesus. The Gospel writer would string these sayings together as he reported what Jesus said. The evangelists did not want to lose any of Jesus’ ideas so they tried to connect them together as best they could.

A second theory is that Rabbis preached this way. Sermons were referred to as a string of beads. The thought was that the attention span of people was very short so the preacher should not dwell on one topic too long.

When I was taught homiletics, the instructor had that theory. We were mostly preaching to baby boomers he would say, and baby boomers grew up watching television. The typical television message would last three minutes or less. He said that we should preach with a series of “moves” or ideas. No example should last longer than three minutes.

We live in the internet generation. In our time, as people click from one piece of information to another on the internet the feeling is that people dwell on no idea for over thirty seconds. This makes preaching very challenging.

Jesus’ examples are very pithy. He uses humor like the speck in the eye for example. Jesus points out that we all have a plank in our eye. The best of us are sinners. The worst of us have our good points. No one seems to be completely good or evil so we should be slow to make judgements about people. Jesus gives us a moral lesson and he does it in a way that we will remember.

Reflection Questions:

1.    What is a saying of Jesus that I remember? Why do I remember it?

2.   Do I have a long attention span? What keeps my attention?

Dear Parishioners,

          Our pastoral council is presently recruiting new members. What does the council do, we might ask. Every parish is supposed to have such a council. The pastoral council is said to be a consultative body. The pastor should ask the pastoral council for advice as to what direction the parish should take. This is an important resource for me.

          We have lost council members over the course of the last year because of death and because people have moved away. We also have people who are completing their term. Would you like to help lead our parish? If you would like this, stop by our parish office and get an application to join the council.

          Our Lady of Peace, please pray for us,

          Fr. Mark