A Tour through the Mass!

The Homily

Homilies are a continuation in the present of what the writers of the gospels were doing as they passed on the Word of God spoken by Jesus and the Word of God who was Jesus himself.

Firstly, the very word ‘gospel’ means good news and so the import of every homily ought to be to pass on that good news, for the homilist to ask the question: how is what I am to say ‘good news’ for those who will hear it?

Secondly, what the gospel writers were doing was taking what they had received from those who went before them and handing it on.  They did not pass the gospel on randomly but with an eye to those whom they were handing on the word about Jesus and the Word who was Jesus.  The Catechism of the Catholic Church explains this well: “The sacred authors, in writing the four gospels, selected certain of the many elements which had been handed on, either orally or already in written form; others they synthesised or explained with an eye to the situation of the churches, while sustaining the form of preaching, but always in such a fashion that they told us the honest truth about Jesus.” (No 126.3).

Of course, at a less authoritative level, the homilist is involved in a parallel process.  The homilist is seeking not just to present or describe what happened in the past but to bring that past of the words, actions and person of Jesus into the present of the gathered people of God.  The homilist seeks to bring the good news to them and to draw them into deeper communion with that Lord Jesus.  That communion with the Lord issues in action parallel to his own.

It is also valuable to link the homily – and so the whole Liturgy of the Word – with the celebration of the Eucharist which is to come after it, that celebration in which communion with the Lord Jesus finds its deepest form, that communion during which he draws us in to such communion with him that we can be described as his body. 

By Fr Frank O’Loughlin