Monthly Archives: February 2025

(POSTED: 8/22/11) Preacher man, preacher man, sing me a message: I reached the age of reason in the ’30s, voting and drinking age in the ’50s, ineligibility for the draft in the ’60s (military, not athletic-scholarship draft, for which I never quite qualified). Many other ages since then, too numerous to mention, but now I’m at the age when sermons almost never satisfy me.

That’s the bad news. The good news is, being older than almost all the preachers I hear, I’m allowed to complain. Sermons are too long, too personal, disorganized, lacking beginning, middle and end (you never know when one will stop, though eventually they all do), insufficiently conducive to the worship experience, etc. (I unloaded all my cares and woe about it in a Wednesday Journal of Oak Park & River Forest column a few years back.)

More good news: there are happy exceptions. The Jesuit Fr. Chris D. a few months back got from me these words of commendation:

As to my liking yr sermon a week ago, it was because it was on faith, which gets not enough attention, as if true believers are the only ones who go to church, it had one idea, you gotta have trust (which doesn’t solve the problem, of course, but no sermon can do that, just give a nudge), it had a beginning, middle and end, it was short and sweet.

I admit I almost bailed out attention-wise at the start, which sounded like an old-time philosophy thesis, and admit you didn’t keep me entirely from wandering, but yr whole demeanor and honest, earnest presentation kept me enough on board to catch the ending. I might have cheered when you called a halt before I was wondering when the end would come.

That last is crucial. So: length, signs of organization, basic stuff here. Ordination gives a license to preach, but it doesn’t make a man a preacher. Nor would it a woman, nor a married man, by the way, which makes this a problem that’s impervious to your favorite revolutionary change in direction of who gets ordained or not.

Another sermon I recall, though not in detail, was by Deacon Tom D. a while back, which was remarkably well prepared, and I’m not sure but I think was read by him. Yes. Reading a well-written sermon is the way to go for many. Deacon Bruce B. years ago also delivered sermons that showed careful preparation, almost certainly written out beforehand. Are deacons more careful about it, familiarity not having bred contempt for the process?

A Southwest Side priest, Fr. George P. at Queen of Martyrs in Evergreen Park, goes beyond that, providing his sermon in writing before he delivers it. Now that’s what I call accountability.

My model for such preparation is one of our separated brethren, the Rev. Bob L., of Oak Park, whose sermons were available for several weeks, easily taken off the vestibule rack at his small Lutheran church. Bob was a neighbor. He and his wife raised five very presentable kids, by the way. And the sermons? They were meaty and provided much food for thought. Now that’s what I call preaching.

Well, we might pay attention to the God idea, which is what believers say. Not here to argue the point, rather to use it for starter.

Take confession, still a going term, once presented as replacement by the 1969 fellows as reconciliation, typical softening by the ‘69-ers as off-putting, something you can use in mixed company.

Find a confessor, the listener, who will be neither shocked nor bored, who pays attention to what you say and with any luck comes up with something that shows he gets you or at least does so this time. News you can use, you might say . . .

Then there’s praying, in which passivity is sometimes overrated. Referring here to the practice of sitting or kneeling in church, Blessed Sacrament exposed or not, waiting for the Spirit to move you. Overrated in this sense, that it might well not work for you. For others, not you.

What to do? Try jabbering away at The Almighty. He’s listening, of course. You do so respectfully, needless to say. You calm down if possible, keeping in mind whom you are talking to, letting it sink in as much as possible, drinking it in.

The Our Father and Hail Mary come highly recommended, but we speak here of some sort of contact that allows some sort of assertion of the self that’s not written in black and white. You’re getting personal with The Creator, carefully, respectfully.

Oh that word again, that concept that doesn’t make a big claim on your psyche but neither does it violate protocol. It’s a common enough word that you can relate to without jumping whole hog into the prescribed and, let us say, the scary.

It has so many meanings or situations which are appropriate, a sort of sounding board, or stepping stone. Use it for that. Watch your step.

You come hands empty? Most of us do. Go back. Pick up your Bible. The gospels serve you well at this point, all about the God-Man, the Son, making his way as salesman for what the Father has to say.

Listen to Him. Picture Him at work, as in St. Ignatius’ Spiritual Exercises, 2nd week, as described here:

. . . . meditating on Jesus as itinerant preacher and miracle-worker. This was our introduction to the Ignatian imagination. We were put to picturing or contemplating Gospel events, as opposed to great and noble thoughts. In episode after episode, we imagined ourselves there with Jesus, almost without attention to the meaning of it for ourselves but rather to get familiar with him.

So. Take what you pictured and make it your own.

Read it in a good version, I mean translation and some explaining along the way. I recommend The Alba House Gospels, in the pages of which you find readable accounts that fit nicely in most pockets and/or purses. Among many others, of course.

Think it over. Take charge of the experience. Come to Jesus with it on your mind.

Sit or kneel with it on your mind. You’re in charge here. Relish the thought. Let the thinking flow. This is horse’s mouth stuff. React as the spirit moves you. Fifteen minutes wherever you find yourself.

In background is what? Rather, who?

The One who’s everywhere. Who else? You’ve done something about it. His world-wide presence, that is.

Devils taking the hindmost. Why the Michael the Archangel prayer? Rather, why not????

Mark 5:1-20

Jesus and his disciples came to the other side of the sea, to the territory of the Gerasenes. When he got out of the boat, at once a man from the tombs who had an unclean spirit met him.

Possessed, he was, with a dreadful history. He’d been living in a cemetery, bound often “with shackles and chains,” which he would rip off, “night and day . . . crying out and bruising himself.”

Spotting Jesus, who had been telling him, “Unclean spirit, come out!” running up and throwing himself in front of him, “do not torment me!”

Jesus asked him his name. “Legion is my name, their leader said. “There are many of us.” He begged not to being driven from the neighborhood, where presumably they had found a sort of resting place.

Jesus said OK and sent them to a herd of pigs, 2,000 of them according to Mark, “a great herd,” says Luke. via the Knox version.

Down a “steep bank” they went, into the sea, where they drowned, and off went the herdsmen to alert the neighborhood, stunned by the news. People flocked to the scene to see what happened.

When they got there, there was the former home of devils, sitting “clothed and in his right mind.”

They were “were seized with fear.” It didn’t help to be told by witnesses what had happened.

Panic-stricken, they begged Jesus to get lost.

He went. Boarding the boat on which he had come, he was begged by the now demon-free man to let him aboard so he could join his entourage.

Nope, Jesus said, sending him rather to his home and family to tell them what Jesus had done for him. Off he went to in the neighborhood, spreading the word.

And all, Mark tells us, “were amazed.”

Well, it is amazing, when you get down to it, less you might say, because Jesus routed these irredeemably wicked creatures, as the image it gives us of their presence in the world.

Why on earth would Vatican 2 have downplayed praying to their chief enemy Michael, contradicting the supreme pontiff of a mere 79 years previously who installed the prayer to him to be said after low masses.