"Stop the Homily Abuse"

A very lively and refreshing take on homily by Archbishop Socrates Villegas, who is also the President of the Catholic Bishops' Conference of the Philippines...

• We were all abused by the homilies of our elder priests when we were seminarians. When our turn came to deliver homilies, the abused became the abuser.
• Long, winding, repetitious, irrelevant, unprepared homilies are signs of a sick spiritual life of the priest.
• It is not enough to prepare our homilies; the good priest must prepare himself.
• We preach only Jesus Christ; always Jesus Christ.
• When you listen and pray before you talk, you learn something new and your homily will be crisp and fresh.
• The simple lifestyle of priests is the homily easiest to understand.
• Reading and study must not stop after the seminary. If we stop reading and study, we endanger the souls of our parishioners. If we stop studying, then we start forcing our people to read the so-called open book of our lives – the comic book of our lives, hardly inspiring, downright ridiculous and awfully scandalous. The homily becomes our story and not the story of Jesus.
• Believe what you read. Teach what you believe. Practise what you teach.

Click here for the full text.