ePriest.com: Your Spanish Homily

Readings

Reading I: Isaiah 35:4-7
Psalm: Psalms 146:7, 8-9, 9-10
Reading II: James 2:1-5
Gospel: Mark 7:31-37

Preaching Tip

How Long Is too Long?

This question has no one-size-fits-all answer. Perhaps you will be interested to hear what a Protestant preaching professor has to say on the subject:

  • Sermon lengths vary. Robert G. Lee, the eloquent Southern Baptist, frequently preached an hour or more. He once commented, "Sermonettes are preached by preacherettes and they produce Christianettes."
  • ... Perhaps most common is a sermon that runs anywhere from twenty to thirty minutes, although one study revealed that the typical preacher spends thirty to forty minutes delivering his Sunday morning sermon.
  • An infallible way to insure fidgety, inattentive, restless, and even resentful congregations is to let your sermons do like Tennyson's babbling brook: "run on and on and on."
  • Bishop William Stubbs of Oxford responded to the curate who asked him what to preach about, "Preach about God and preach about twenty minutes."
  • There is an old adage which says, "Stand up to be seen, speak up to he heard, shut up to be appreciated."
  • ... The best advice is for a man to watch people, not the clock. People's attention span is not long. Do not exaggerate the interest of your sermon nor the attention of your congregation. Leave them with the feeling that they would like to hear more, not that you should have quit earlier.

An Introduction to Contemporary Preaching, J. Daniel Bauman, p196

B To 23                                                              

APRENDER A ESCUCHAR

Jesús, para curar al sordomudo utiliza la pedagogía de los sacramentos: Lo aparta, lo toca, reza por él y le habla. Cuánta falta hace que hoy se repita el milagro, que se abran nuestros oídos y escuchemos las inspiraciones del Espíritu Santo. Nuestra presencia en la sociedad debe ser transformadora o no es presencia. Si nuestro mundo va mal es porque todavía hay muchos cristianos que se niegan a ver, a oír, a hablar.

Hermanas y hermanos:

1. El sordomudo es un hombre aislado, encerrado en su soledad; necesita un hermano que lo comprenda y lo ayude a abrirse a la realidad de la vida y a la relación con los demás. Jesús es ese hermano. Sólo Cristo puede curarnos de nuestras miserias, darnos la luz para caminar por los senderos rectos. "Tú me has llamado -debemos decir con San Agustín,- he gritado y has vencido mi sordera. Tú has brillado y has disipado mi ceguera. Me has tocado y he comenzado a desear tu paz".

¿Qué signos realizamos nosotros para que se note que el Reino de Dios está llegando?  ¡Somos sacramento de Dios para nuestros hermanos! Repitamos los mismos gestos de Jesús como la atención a los enfermos y a los marginados. Las obras de misericordia son signos del Reino de Dios.

2. Cada día ocurren nuevos milagros a nuestro alrededor. Son signos sensibles de la presencia del Mesías. ¡Y nosotros somos testigos! A través de los signos sacramentales se nos manifiestan los milagros interiores: luz de conversión que ilumina al hombre para que pueda vivir centrado en la muerte y resurrección de Cristo, y para quien la existencia humana adquiere un sentido nuevo.

3. De la abundancia del corazón habla la boca. Un proverbio árabe dice: "Abre la boca sólo si estás seguro de que lo que vas a decir es más bello que el silencio". Por eso si hablar a Dios es algo grandioso, lo es más escucharlo cuando nos habla en medio del silencio impregnado de amor.

Las palabras son los medios de comunicación de nuestra intimidad con los demás; no podemos comunicar una intimidad mezquina o raquítica, sino rica y enriquecedora que lleve al bien y entusiasme para la acción. San Pablo, en la carta a los romanos, nos revela el proceso que sigue la transmisión de la fe. La fe entra por el oído, es decir, como consecuencia de la predicación del evangelio. Nuestra pobre palabra de hombres, en la medida que es portadora de la Palabra de Dios, es "viva y eficaz, más tajante que espada de doble filo".

Hermanas y hermanos:

En el Bautismo hemos recibido la vocación de comunicadores de la Palabra de Dios. ¿Hemos aprendido ya a escucharla? Santo Tomás definía el apostolado como "la transmisión de lo que hemos contemplado en la oración". No traicionemos el contenido del mensaje. Nosotros mismos somos sacramento vivo de salvación con nuestra palabra y nuestro testimonio.

English Translation

23rd Sunday in Ordinary Time, Year B                                               

                                                                                         LEARNING TO LISTEN

To cure the deaf and mute man, Jesus uses a sacramental pedagogy.  He takes him aside, touches him, prays for him, and speaks to him. How we need this miracle repeated today, that our ears may open to hear the Holy Spirit’s inspirations! Our presence in society must transform it, or it is not really a presence. If our world is going badly, it is because there are still many Christians that refuse to see, hear, or speak.
 
Brothers and Sisters:

1. The deaf and mute man is cut-off, locked up in his loneliness. He needs a brother who understands him and helps him to open himself to life’s reality and relationships with others. Jesus is that brother. Only Christ can cure us of our miseries and give us light to walk along the straight paths. “You called me,” we must say with Saint Augustine. “I called out and you have overcame my deafness. You shone bright and unclouded my blindness. You touched me and I began to desire your peace”.

What signs do we perform to show that the Kingdom of God is coming? We are God’s sacrament for our brothers and sisters! Let us repeat Jesus’ same actions by caring for the sick and marginalized. The works of mercy are signs of the Kingdom of God.
 
2. Each day new miracles happen all around us. They are palpable signs of the Messiah’s presence. And we are the witnesses! Through sacramental signs internal miracles become apparent to us: the light of conversion that enlightens people so that they might live centered on the death and resurrection of Christ, thus acquiring new meaning for their human existence.
 
3. Our lips speak from the abundance of the heart. An Arab proverb says, “Open your mouth only if you’re sure what you are about to say is more beautiful than silence.” Therefore, if speaking to God is something magnificent, it is even more so when listening to him speaking to us in the midst of a silence infused with love.

Words are the means of communicating our intimacy to others; we cannot communicate a weak and petty intimacy, but rather a rich and enriching one that leads towards goodness and encourages action. In the Letter to the Romans, Saint Paul reveals the process that the transmission of faith follows. Faith enters through hearing, that is, as a consequence of the preaching of the Gospel. In so far as they bear the Word of God, our feeble human words are “living and active, sharper than a double–edged sword.”  

Brothers and Sisters: In Baptism we have received the vocation to be communicators of the Word of God. Have we already learned to hear it? Saint Thomas defines the apostolate as “handing on what we have contemplated in prayer.” Let us not betray the contents of the message. We are the living sacrament of salvation through our word and testimony.