Form and inform

The developement of the Bishops' Synod in Rome on the Word of God is becoming interesting because a growing consensus among the interventions made is on poor preaching of priests. The bishops realise that homilies are no longer bible-based, irrelevant to the readings at Mass, lacked imagination and even boring - and so people go to join protestant churches where the Word of God is vibrantly preached. Let's hope that this will push our priests to study more the Bible, develope a biblical imagination and culture, and make homilies more relevent to the daily lives of the people as God's Word is challenging them.

My suggestion is get all the priests to go back and read the homilies of the Fathers of the Church (the saints and great theologians of the 2nd - 7th centuries); they are lively, imaginative and yet full of doctrinal teaching and spirituality. Their homilies formed and informed. My experience for the past 12 years as professor has shown me how shallow and ignorant some clergy are regarding these great patristic sermons and explanations of the Bible - to the extent that they laugh, scoff and outrightedly reject the preaching of these saints and Fathers of the Church when I bring it up or quote them. Well when you are losing countless souls who drift to other denominations because of the Bible-less and soul-less preaching, I think such arrogant ignorance has reaped its own fruit.

If the Synod of Bishops continue along this line for the next week, I'd expect the final statement to recommend a "conversion" (not my words but the synod bishops' ) toward a biblical culture and imagination by the clergy who must learn again to preach God's Word, not their own. See you guys back in school!

If you want daily webcast report of the Bishops' Synod, see http://www.saltandlighttv.org/prog_special_synod_of_bishops.html