 The name of the Father and of the Son and the Holy Spirit. So when I was a child, I saw this movie, Quo Badis, and the movie is about the early church, and about this Roman soldier who begins to learn about the Christian faith, and he thinks the Christians are completely weird, but eventually, slowly, he finds it as hard as won over to Jesus Christ. It's a powerful story. All the special effects or lack thereof would be laughable today, but the plot is developed and the characters, well, the actors knew how to act. And one particular part of this movie that I remember was that the community had come together for the Eucharist, and St. Peter was there. When St. Peter comes in, they have assembled, and he begins to tell the story about Jesus. He's recounting, I remember when the Lord did this and so on. Then after he recounts the story, he begins to apply it to the community. I remember that because at the time I was very moved by it, but also later in seminary, when they were describing preaching and so on, I remember that scene that Peter told the story of the Lord Jesus, and then he applied it. Dear friends, that's exactly what's supposed to happen in the portion of the Liturgy of the Word in which the gospel is proclaimed and it is to be explained. That's the homily. The homily is when the sacred minister, priest or deacon, draws from the wellsprings of God's revelation and applies it. The homiless is to take very seriously his responsibility to keep personal opinion or preferences out of the homily. They don't belong there. If they're used, they have to be clearly identified. The homily is when the one who has received the grace of holy orders and been trained in theology explains to the faithful. This is what's happening. This is why it's important. This is why you should care as believers. This is why it can make your life, your discipleship better. Now the homily principally is about summary and commentary of the Word of God and applying it to the life of the Christian today. But the homiless is also free to draw from any truth of faith. So for example, during this series, I'm preaching about the different parts of the mass. At our weekend masses, we're preaching the deacon and I about the Ten Commandments. So we have chosen to choose from other parts of our faith in order to preach, to develop. But principally the homily is about the Word of God but there are some other options. What's the main point of the homily? How actually how about this? What is the main point of preaching? You know, Paul actually summarizes that for us. Paul develops in his letters to the Corinthians what apostolic preaching is supposed to be. The fruit of that gift. It's a gift to preach. It's a gift to hear the Word preach. The result, the spiritual fruit that should be associated with that gift is conviction among the faithful. That when you hear the apostolic preaching you are strengthened, convicted in your faith. You leave the place of worship knowing I have to be a better Christian. I have to do this better. I need to go deeper here. The purpose of the homily is not to make you feel good. It's not to give you warm fuzzies. It's not to give you these emotional highs or euphoria that are so praised in our society today. The purpose of the homily after the proclamation of the gospel telling the story of the Lord Jesus is then to apply it to teach to bring conviction among the faithful. Now I realize that that might be difficult. You hear that, you're like, I'm not sure about that. I haven't seen that. To be told, we have kind of a crisis of sorts in preaching in the Catholic Church. Sometimes people often times ask me, Father, are you a convert? No, no, no. I receive the Catholic faith from the breast of my mother. But they ask that question because you preach like a Baptist. I say, oh no, no, no, no. See, the Catholic Church, we have the full scriptures. We have seven more books. I preach better than the Baptist. But people say that because they're not accustomed to the preaching style. In large part because they do not know our tradition. Our tradition, which begins in the Acts of the Apostles is a tradition of strong homiletics. Strong preaching. Look at the five apostolic homilies contained in the Acts of the Apostles. Some of them preached by our first pope. Look then into the early church as they would literally preach as they were being eaten by lions. And look at the subsequent tradition. Francis of Assisi was a deacon, preached. He read some of his homilies. Or Anthony of Padua, his disciple, read his homilies but get ready. Talk about conviction. The great reformers, nations of Loyola, Francis de Sales, John of the Cross, great preachers. We have a beautiful, powerful tradition of preaching in the Catholic Church that regrettably is unknown to the average believer. In large part, let's be honest, because the reform of the Second Vatican Council was a homily. In large places, the homily, now, admittedly, before the reform, the homily usually wasn't given. It was a shock to me, a shock when I read the history of the church in the United States before the Second Vatican Council. The average mass did not have a homily. The priest just didn't preach. Or if he preached, he preached after the mass. Right? It's very bizarre. So the work of the reformers to put the homily back in the literature of the word, make it practically mandatory that the homily be given by the priest or deacon. And then it's important that we understand the work of that reform, but also what happens, though, is when it was brought in, back, a lot of times the priest didn't know what to do. And then the bad reform was we don't have to make the faith understandable. We have to make it digestible and so on. All these things are good, but it was all done poorly. We had to get some really bad syrupy homily. Right? I mean, there are some parishes I visited. The homily is basically the priest telling you about his dog, his nieces and nephews, his vacation, where he's going to go. Who cares? Father, no one cares. No one cares. You got your own vacations, your own kids, your own nieces and nephews, your own pets. You don't need to hear about the priests, right? It's good that that sharing happens, stories like that should be rare. Otherwise, the homily becomes all about the priest. Right? About his personality. About his life. I think the psychologists call that narcissism. Right? Because the homily is supposed to be about Jesus. I get to brag about our Lord. Talk about our Lord. Get excited about our Lord. In a society that tells us, shut up! We didn't want to talk about Jesus Christ and use the faith of prayer. We get to come together in this Eucharistic sacrifice and I get to talk about Jesus. Right? I get to tell us and remind us what it means to be his disciple. I get to, by the power of the Holy Spirit, bring conviction to the baptized that we might understand how we are called to live, what we are called to believe and what we are supposed to do as believers. Right? The homily is powerful. When I was in vocation to work, I had to travel all throughout the diocese in various places. At times I had to come celebrate the Mass with brother priests. We have some remarkable homilists in this diocese. Remarkable. Spellbound. Wow! That's the gospel. Powerful. All that natural talent that's just used in order to share Jesus Christ. Right? They're out there. They are my mentors. Right? They pray for those priests. Right? They taught me well. But then we have a lot of priests who've given up. They don't study. They don't prepare the homily. They don't dive into the treasures of the living word. And they just want to give you porridge. And instead of porridge, the Lord wants to prepare a banquet for the children of God. I tell you, dear friends, do not settle for the porridge. I understand. It's easy to come, warm fuzzies, hear the funny stories about the priest's life and move on. But you deserve so much more. And the Lord Jesus wants to give you so much more. And the work of this broken instrument at this part of the Mass is not to tell you about my life, but to tell you about the life of our Lord. And what it means to follow Him. That's the purpose of the homily. To give you conviction. And sometimes that means that a voice will be raised. A passion will be given. I think it's so funny when we're allowed to yell and scream at football games and sports events, right? But when we suddenly get to this part of the Word of God, where the passion is supposed to be subdued, it's supposed to be boring, it's all supposed to be laughs and happy clap here, right? How about we bring that passion here? Not simply here at this ambo, but here in each of our hearts. You might hear the word proclaimed, we see the grace of conviction and allow our hearts to burn with the love for God and the knowledge of His love for us. That's the purpose of the Lusia of the Word. That's one of the purposes of the homily. So as we think about the different parts of the Mass, you should think about what is the purpose of the homily? It's not to break. It's not to interlude. It's not to intermission. It's not the time for laughs and giggles. It's the time to take this beautiful immense treasure of the written Word of God and to apply it to our lives. To hear what is preached and then allow it into our hearts and to make a difference. I pray that each of you understand the purpose of the homily. I think one of the tragedies of the church today is that homiletics is so poor and the word is not being proclaimed. This is why the average Catholic has not heard about abortion or gay marriage or the proper understanding of immigration or all these different things because the priests are too busy, some of them, they're too busy talking about themselves. When the Word of God needs the story of the Lord Jesus. So understand what you're supposed to get at the homily. If you don't get that, then raise holy heaven because you deserve so much more. Allow the homily to convict you, the power of the Holy Spirit to convict you and then take the Word of God and apply it in your life. Do you realize to your friends it's not easy being a Christian? Have you noticed that? I've oftentimes preached if you don't come to this altar a little bruised and broken then you haven't done this right. You should be able to come to the table of the Word and understand and receive that conviction, that understanding, that vocation, that push to both allow yourself to be healed to receive the grace and then get out there and keep fighting. Once you understand the intensity of the battle the play games get sickening. To deprive the people of God of the power of the Word of God for stupid, cutesy stories. How insulting to you the baptized. How insulting to you who are carrying the cross of our Lord and come here in order to receive the help of His grace in the encouragement of His living Word. Understand the homily understand the leadership of the Word and on Tuesday we're going to continue our journey and talk about the creed and the prayers of the faithful.