The Priestly Vocation

In this point of view we see the key of the remark often made that the remote preparation for preaching is more important than the proximate. By the remote preparation is meant the priest's daily life, his union with God, his supernatural views of the things of this world, and the acquiring of his store of thoughts from his prayer, his meditation, his spiritual reading, and, not least important, his pastoral work among the poor, the sick and the dying. "We cannot but speak the things which we have seen and heard." 62 If the truths of faith are so vividly present to us that God's dealings with mankind are as things we have actually seen and heard, we shall long that others may share our privilege, and we shall feel the greatest joy in instructing them in Christ's Name. But if this spirit be wanting, all human eloquence will be of no avail. The value of the sermon is the reflection of the life of the preacher.

In considering the question of reading and study in preparation for the pulpit, we naturally turn first to the two-fold branches of Scripture and Dogma as that which will help chiefly to give substance and backbone to our sermons.

It is astonishing how little use many preachers make of the inspired Word of God, containing as it does in itself not only the essence of all religious history and dogma, but so many of the words of Christ Himself. Limiting our observations to the Gospels alone, it is an extraordinary grace we have received in having such full records of His words and acts at least during His public life. This in itself enables us to have a real personal knowledge and love of our Redeemer. We should expect our sermons to be full of His words and sayings, His parables, His illustrations, the example of His works; and that all our moral lessons should be illustrated and driven home by His words. Yet in practice we hear sermon after sermon with no more than a few texts from Scripture scattered through them, and these often isolated and without their context; and when we find a preacher really familiar with our Lord's life and words, we comment on it as quite remarkable.

It is probable that this is largely due to our habit of quoting isolated texts in support of dogmatic truths, and our very reverence for them as the inspired Word has led us to rest on the actual words and to lose sight of their general context. Very probably also Cardinal Manning's remark may be true, that since the sixteenth century there has been a tendency to over-strictness against the popular use of the Scriptures as a sort of recoil or reaction against Protestantism. At the present day, however, there is happily a reaction against this in all countries, and a movement in favour of circulating at least the New Testament more freely in the vernacular. With us we can date it from the issue of the sixpenny New Testament by Burns and Gates, and the Penny Gospels of the Catholic Truth Society; but the cheap Gospel texts in the vernacular which have appeared in some other countries—notably those issued by St. Luke's Society in Rome itself—have outdone anything we have in England.

One of our chief and foremost duties then is to familiarise ourselves with the words and actions of our Lord in English. There are many texts with which we are familiar in Latin, but we seldom make use of them because of the labour of turning them into English in the middle of a sermon, when our mind is already intently occupied. Let us know them in English for the sake of our people whom we wish to instruct. As to how this is best done opinions may differ. Some recommend learning texts by heart so as to have them always at hand. Others would find this method too mechanical, and would prefer to trust to their own reading of and meditation on the Gospels to bring about the desired result. They would argue that he will have more command over texts that he has used and pondered over than over those he has simply learnt by heart.

It is wonderful how the simple quoting of Gospel words elevates our sermons. The people want the words of our Lord, His acts, His parables, the lessons He intended to teach; they want to hear of the collateral setting of His life, the gradual development of His work, the kind of people He was teaching, and so forth. Then they should hear the teaching of St. Paul, his words to his converts, his warnings against abuses, his doctrinal and disciplinary instructions. Then also they like to hear from time to time some of the Old Testament—either the history of God's chosen people, or the beauties of the Messianic prophecies—of Isaias and others; or the psalmody of David; or the Sapiential books of Solomon; or the works of Jeremias and the other prophets. Mere memory work will not do all this for us; we must ourselves be accustomed to think of the Gospels, to meditate on our Lord's words, to see the meaning of His parables, and so forth. Here is prayer enough and work enough to last us a lifetime, and be continually bearing fruit.

Now we come to direct preparation of our sermon. Undoubtedly the only way at the beginning is to write it out, learn it and deliver it from memory. But this laborious process is only a means to an end. It will in the first instance help the priest through his initial shyness and diffidence in speaking of God and holy things in public; and it will lay the foundation for the methodical composition of a discourse. For he will soon learn the sequence of ideas which sound at first artificial, though eventually they become part of the instinct of the preacher—text, introduction, statement, development, explanation, illustration, peroration, etc. But it bears the same relation to preaching that the old autumn manœuvres did to war. His sermons in future will not be written out: in the present hard-worked state of our clergy, it would be impossible; and in any case, it would be ineffective. A sermon written and repeated by heart must sound unreal and dead. 63 As Cardinal Manning puts it, "The written word is what we thought when we wrote it; the spoken sermon is what we think at the moment of speaking. It is our present conviction of intellect and feeling of heart: it is therefore real, and felt to be real by those who hear it." 64

It is not intended to discourage a careful preparation, so far as circumstances will permit; quite the contrary. But it will not be of the nature of writing a set discourse. It will be a far more simple preparation. Cardinal Manning instances the preaching of the Apostles. "We cannot," he says, "conceive these messengers of God labouring to compose their speech, or studying the rules and graces of literary style. The records of their preaching in the New Testament are artless and simple as the growths of nature in the forest, which reveal the power and beauty of God. Their words and writings are majestic in their elevation and depth and pathos and unadorned beauty, like the breadth and simplicity of the sea and sky. Their whole being was pervaded by the divine facts and truths, the eternal realities of which they spoke." 65

Let us fix our ideas by a definite instance. In all St. Paul's career there was no one sermon which would have needed greater care than his sermon at Athens. He had to speak to a highly educated audience, of people without belief even in God, most of them eaten up with pride, listening to him with a supercilious curiosity; and he knew that for most of them his sermon would be the one opportunity of their lifetime. If any sermon of his would have needed previous thought and preparation, it would have been this one. Of course we have no authority for saying how much preparation he gave to it. We can well imagine his carefully thinking over what he was going to say, thinking of his initial outburst about the Unknown God, carefully considering his line of argument about the Resurrection of our Lord, his reference to the Greek poet with whom both he and they were familiar, and so forth. But equally we most assuredly cannot for a moment imagine him writing out and learning his discourse. Had he done so, it would have lost all its force and reality. Any gain in the artificial rhetoric, or the choice of words, or the like would have been far more than compensated for by the hollowness and want of fervour hic et nunc. Other instances might be adduced and the same reasoning applied to them: St. Peter's sermon on the day of Pentecost, St. Stephen's speech to his murderers, and many others. From internal evidence we can see that these were thought out and prepared beforehand; but we cannot even imagine their having been written out and committed to memory.

Our future preparation may perhaps be something of this kind. First we have to fix on our subject—not always the easiest part of our work. Let us suppose that on reading through the Sunday Gospel some aspect of it or some incident in it appeals to us from a particular point of view, and that point we decide to develop. Possibly something we have read in the past occurs to mind, and we get out a book—or perhaps several books—to suggest to us a few ideas. Then the first stage of our work is done.

The next process is to think. We have to make the ideas our own, and develop them according to the bent of our own minds. This cannot easily be done as we sit at our desks. Thoughts will not come to order. Developing a subject in one's mind is a gradual process, and takes time. It can well be done as we walk from place to place, or exercise any light employment. It is specially suitable to do it as we go about our pastoral work. The words we use in our visits to members of our flock are the reflection of our mind and will bear close resemblance to our words in the pulpit. If we find plenty to say, and are conscious of the consolation we give by saying it to the poor individually, why should it not be so likewise when we address them from the pulpit?

In order to complete our preparation, we must then sit at our desk and write out the substance of our thoughts and put them in methodical order. We should also look up the texts of Scripture on which we rely, and frequently the context will suggest further thoughts. All this will vary between man and man, and between day and day. Some will write long notes, others short. On some days thoughts come easily, on others only with difficulty. Some people may find it useful to write a fair copy when the matter has been rearranged, others will arrange their matter methodically at the outset, and so forth. When we have done this, we can leave the sermon to the time, presumably not far distant, when we are going to preach it.

In the case of many of our less formal sermons, the delivery follows close on the first preparation, and even that has to be much curtailed. Such are the few words which we deliver to Holy Family meetings, or other Confraternities, and short addresses at weekday evening services. The Sunday catechetical instruction forms a subject by itself, and the idea that it can be efficiently performed with little or no preparation should be strongly deprecated. It is an opportunity of doing great things for the children, and implanting in their minds ideas which will last them through life, and often be, as it were, their sheet-anchor to keep them to their religion in after years, in times of stress and temptation, or call them back to it if they have unhappily fallen away. The responsibility of such an opportunity is great, and no trouble should be too great to secure its effective performance.

We now come to the time of the sermon's delivery. To some the quarter of an hour immediately before ascending the pulpit is the most important part of the preparation; to all it is an important part. It is essential that we should begin with our mind full of our subject. A very little practice will enable us to feel at home in the pulpit once we have begun, and we shall soon acquire self-command and power to collect our thoughts there. Nevertheless, we shall often forget many things which we have thought of during our preparation, while other thoughts will suggest themselves in most unexpected fashion. A celebrated French preacher once said that he had never ended a sermon without finding that he had omitted most of what he had intended to say, and said much that he had not intended. 66 It matters not: what matters is that when the priest is speaking he should be full of his subject, earnest, enthusiastic, speaking straight from his heart, and above all things zealous for the good of his hearers.

Then let his declamation be simple, earnest, natural. The inflated and artificial style of oratory, current until almost modern times, would to-day be wholly out of place. At best it was ill-suited to so lofty a purpose, and St. Alphonsus only followed the lead of many saints and others in warning the preacher against the style it naturally led to. The present simplicity of taste is far more in keeping with the sacredness of the work. Let the priest say what he means and mean what he says, and the intrinsic force and sacredness of his words will be better than all rhetoric. Above all, let there be no affectation of manner or self-consciousness, which does so much to mar the effect of a sermon. By all means, however, let him practise clearness of utterance. It is very trying to a congregation to sit before a preacher whom they cannot hear; and especially when such happens through the preacher's neglect of the ordinary rules of elocution. Nor does it usually require any greater effort on the part of the preacher to make himself intelligible. Clearness does not always necessitate loudness, nor is it always achieved by it. A careful utterance in a suitable pitch is really all that is required; and the people should be spared the annoyance of listening to a preacher who clips his words, or only partially pronounces them, or drops his voice so that the last syllable of a word or the last word of a sentence is inaudible: all these faults make it an effort to follow him. And if there is any weakness in the initial h or the final g of a word, the effect is far from pleasing. In order to draw fruit from a sermon, one wants to be able to follow it without effort, and to be undisturbed by fault or peculiarities of enunciation. These ends cannot be attained unless the preacher will take some trouble; but with a little trouble it can easily be done. Nevertheless, it often is not done. 67

The preacher should likewise make an effort to get over his natural shyness and disinclination to use his hands. This will go of its own accord as soon as he has had sufficient practice to feel at home in the pulpit. We do not wish to gesticulate so much as the French priests do—it is not in accordance with the genius of our people; and what is suitable in one country is out of place in another. Still less do we want any forced or unnatural gesticulation. At first we should do with very little. Many Englishmen do always with very little. But in most cases, it comes natural after a time to use the hands, and when it is natural, it increases greatly the force of our words.

A few remarks should be made as to the length of time at which to aim. It is safe to say that the pressure of modern life calls for shorter sermons than our fathers were accustomed to. The practice of five-minute sermons at the Sunday low masses, which first emanated in systematic form from the Paulists of New York, is now fairly common, and of great service to those who cannot attend the principal mass on Sundays. But the curtailing of the chief sermon may easily be overdone. People will never venture to complain of the shortness of a sermon, but in truth one of eight or ten minutes does not satisfy them, nor allow time to develop the matter properly. It may be admitted, however, that shortness is a fault on the right side, and people would not now tolerate the length of sermon that used to be imposed on them. As a general rule, it would be well to be under twenty minutes rather than over, unless the occasion be an important one, with a special preacher, who may allow himself longer. This applies to the chief sermons only; that at the evening service on a weekday, or at Holy Family or Confraternity meetings or the like would naturally be shorter; eight or ten minutes might in many cases be enough. The length of time that we can hold their attention will of course vary somewhat from day to day. One is able to tell at once when the listeners are getting weary. But even when we are conscious that this is so, there may be more good done than we are aware of. Frequently such has afterwards come to our knowledge; in numerous other cases it may have occurred without our knowing it.

Moreover, the good done by a sermon depends on what has been said in the body of the discourse. A good beginning or a good ending may round it off as a literary composition; but they will not appreciably affect the value of the sermon from the point of view of gaining souls. The same applies to the methodical development of the subject throughout. It is useful to aim at it, but if we fail to attain it, or go astray from the scheme we had made out, no great harm is done. What is important is that whatever we say should come from our heart, and that we should be so united to God as to fulfil our Lord's words, "It is not you that speak, but the spirit of your Father that speaketh in you." 68 This is the way to reach the hearts of our congregation, and to make our sermon in truth part of our pastoral work.

CONFERENCE X

THE RECREATIONS OF A PRIEST

IN the rules of every religious order are to be found special provisions with respect to recreation. These are both positive and negative. On the one hand there is usually a daily recreation which all take in common; and besides this, there are other times on feast days or other occasions when the ordinary rule of silence is relaxed and recreation by conversation is possible. On the other hand there are the negative rules, that a subject must not seek recreation outside his monastery, and must not go out for social intercourse with his neighbours without the leave of his superior, for which he must adduce a good reason.

The prominence attached to such regulations shows the important place which the subject holds in the life of the Order or Congregation. With the secular clergy this is no less so; and as is so often the case in comparing the two states, we find that the secular priest has in one sense a harder task, for he has no limitations of rule to guide him and no superior at hand to counsel him. He has to depend on his own strength of will and his own judgment.

But at the beginning of his priestly career, he has even greater difficulty, for it comes at a time when he has just thrown off the restrictions of seminary life, and also when he is reaching the fulness of his manhood. The world which has been kept from him to a great extent up to then now seems to open out and smile before him. It used to be a frequent question to seminarists, "How soon do you hope to be out?" Now he has come out. He is at once made much of by his new parishioners, who shower upon him invitations to lunch, dinner, supper, or other social gatherings. He needs no small self-control to avoid being carried off his legs at the outset, and being drawn into a daily life such as he never looked forward to when picturing to himself the priesthood.

His personal freedom also tends to increase the difficulty of his state. He has no wife or family to think of, he is alone, and is for the first time in the enjoyment of outward liberty, for his actual priestly duties can in the majority of cases be postponed or adjusted or even omitted to facilitate his recreation. It is very easy for his boy's outlook on life, which he should have put away before entering philosophy, to persist in considerable measure not only during his seminary course, but even after he has begun his career as a priest. Such an attitude is simply to take anything pleasurable or attractive which comes in his way, provided it is not sinful, and to enjoy it.

The state of the newly ordained priest in this respect is vividly depicted by Cardinal Manning:—69

"To a priest who enters for the first time upon the sacerdotal life the first danger is the loss of the supports on which he has so long been resting in the seminary. As in the launching of a ship, when the stays are knocked away, it goes down into the water, thenceforward to depend on its own stability; so a priest going out from the seminary into the field of his work has thenceforward to depend under God upon his own stedfastness of will. The order, method and division of time and of work; the sound of the bell from early morning through the day till the last toll at night; the example and mutual influence and friendship of companions in the same sacred life; and still more the nature, counsel and wise charity of superiors—all these things sustain the watchfulness and perseverance of ecclesiastical students until the day when invested with the priesthood, they go out from the old familiar walls and the door is closed behind them. They are in the wide world, secular as the Apostles were—that is, in the world for the world's sake, not of it, but at war with it; of all men the least secular, unless they become worldly, and the salt lose its savour."

A little later he continues:—

"A life of unlimited liberty is encompassed with manifold temptations. A priest coming out of a seminary needs fellowship, and he often seeks it in society. He does not as yet know the character of those about him, or the reputation of the homes to which he is invited. Before he is aware he is often entangled in relations he would not have chosen and in invitations which, if he had the courage, he would refuse. People are very hospitable and pity a priest's loneliness and like to have him at their tables. Sometimes the best of people are least circumspect and most kindly importunate in their invitations. How shall a young and inexperienced mind hold out against these facilities and allurements to relaxation, unpunctuality, self-indulgence and dissipation? The whole of a priest's life may be determined by his first outset. He has been in it too short a time either to gain or to buy experience."

It is not meant to be inferred that all social invitations should be refused and all intercourse with one's neighbour avoided. Such would be both impossible and undesirable. Nor, indeed, can it be allowed that such invitations are by any means always accepted from motives of recreation at all. Such is of course often the case; but often it is not. In many instances the priest may be fulfilling a duty of charity, or finding a means of spreading his pastoral work, and the recreation may be a secondary consideration, or may even be absent altogether. Indeed, as a priest gets into years he will find more and more that many of his duties will bring all that is necessary for him in the way of recreation without his seeking it by any special act; and this even though he has to face much which is dull or unattractive or monotonous to him. The late Canon Oakeley, in his lectures at St. Thomas's Seminary so far back as the year 1870, lays stress on this point:—70

"A priest," he writes, "especially in some of the less populous missions, will soon find that social intercourse with his parishioners is quite as often a duty of charity as a means of personal recreation. He must either refuse invitations altogether, or participate in some festivities which will tax his good nature and exercise his self-denial quite as much as many of his severer duties. He may have to sit out a dull dinner-party, with uncongenial companions, on a hot day in summer. He may have to carve a round of beef for thirty hungry children at a Christmas party. He may have to adapt himself to the tastes and manners of the poorer members of his flock at some rural entertainment where his presence will tend to promote innocent mirth and to check dangerous excesses. On these and similar occasions he will find it necessary to put a restraint on his natural inclinations, in order to confer on those for whose happiness he is responsible that especial gratification which good Catholics of every class derive from the sympathy and society of their priest."

Yet, apart from duties of charity, some recreative society can lawfully and advisably be sought in the houses of the laity; but it should be strictly under control and subject to narrow limits. Above all things, a priest must not be a slave to it, so as to be driven by human respect often to accept invitations which his reason may tell him to be inordinate. A priest should not be a pleasure-seeker; and if he is not ready to deprive himself of much society which has an attractive appearance, for the sake of his work and for the recollection of his life, it is an unfailing sign of the loss of the priestly spirit. But precisely what limits to lay down for himself, cannot be stated in general terms, for it depends not only on a priest's own personality and temperament, but also on the circumstances in which he is placed. Canon Oakeley, however, adds one restriction which should certainly be adhered to, for we live in an ill-natured world, and our best friends are ready to be captious in their fault-finding:—