Repost: Young Preachers Careful and Careless

[180] My best sermon is the one I know the best.—Massillon.
Many a wandering discourse one hears in which the preacher aims at nothing and hits it.—Dr. Whately.
I have always noticed that the best extemporaneous speeches are those which have been carefully written out beforehand, the manuscript being conveniently within reach in the orator's waistcoat pocket.—J. R. Lowell.

How long should a young priest continue the practice of writing and memorizing his sermons? The question was recently put to a scholarly Catholic prelate and author, and his unhesitating reply was: "Ten years at least." Had the inquiry been as to the length of time during which the average young priest does continue the practice, it is probable, and regretable [sic], that the true answer might have been widely different. As a matter of justice and propriety, no other form of public discourse is entitled to so elaborate a preparation as the sermon; as a matter of fact, one is often tempted to believe that for no other is the preparation so inadequate.

No extended argument is necessary to convince even the youngest of those who have been elevated to the priestly rank that the ministry which they exercise in preaching the Word of God merits their most profound respect, and calls for the best efforts of their intellects and hearts. It is sufficient to remind them that, after the adorable Sacrifice of the altar and the administration of the sacraments, no function is so sublime in itself, or so potential in its results, as that for the performance of which their warrant is the commission of Jesus Christ: "Go ye into the whole world and preach the Gospel to every creature."[1] That Moses and Jeremiah proclaimed themselves unworthy and incapable of this sacerdotal function; that Isaias, to be equipped for its exercise, needed an angel to purify his lips; that St. John the Baptist prepared himself therefor [sic] by the most austere penance and solitude; that St. Teresa declared that she would willingly give her life a thousand times over for the happiness of being charged with so noble a mission—these [181] are considerations well calculated to impress us with  a due sense of its dignity, while the prime fact that preaching was the chief occupation of the Saviour [sic] during the three years of His apostolic life is not only a proof of the intrinsic excellence of the work, but an indication as well of its relative importance among those duties which the priest, "another Christ," has contracted the obligation of performing.

Were any further considerations necessary to imbue the preacher with an exalted idea of his ministry, they would be found in the magnitude of the results—the glory of God and the salvation of souls—which it is the purpose of the spoken word to accomplish, and in the tremendous responsibilities incurred by those who neglect to do what in them lies toward the achievement of those results. It has been well said that, in practical importance, the sermon scarcely yields to the sacraments; for, although these latter are the divinely ordained channels of God's grace, it commonly happens that preaching is the only means by which those who stand most in need of that grace can be brought to the tribunal of penance and to the Holy Table. There is nothing fanciful or exaggerated in the statement that, as often as the priest announces the Word of God to his people, the interests involved in his discourse, and the results dependent on its force or its feebleness, are incomparably greater than those which confront the advocate appealing to a jury on behalf of a fellow-creature's liberty or life. Theoretically, indeed, it is almost impossible for the preacher to have too lofty a conception of the dignity and importance of his office; practically, however, it is quite possible that in his hands the dignity may be compromised and the importance disregarded,—quite possible that he may come to merit not only the epithets "traitor" and "wretch" with which Quintilian brands the lawyer who fails to do his best for his client, but the terrible anathema of Holy Writ: Maledictus qui facit opus Dei negligenter.[2]

Admitting that the genius essential to the formation of a [182] pulpit orator of the highest grade is nature's dower to but very few, and that notable excellence even in lower grades is due in a considerable measure to natural faculties whose lack can be supplied by no amount of industry, there still seems to be no valid reason why the sermons of every man whom God has called to the ministry of His divine word should not be useful, effective, and, in the truest sense of the much abused term, eloquent. Whether the discourses of any given preacher merit this characterization or its opposite, will be found to depend principally on the degree of thoroughness with which he prepares himself for their delivery. And what is meant here is not the remote or general preparation, essential as that undoubtedly is, not the acquisition of an abundant store of knowledge, the leading of an exemplary and a holy life, a habit of study, the spirit of prayer, ardent zeal, purity of intention, and all those other qualities of head and heart that go to form the character of the man "behind the sermon;" [sic] but the measures taken and the means employed in the actual composition of a particular discourse. Concerning this proximate preparation of the sermon, it may be taken for granted that according as it is thorough or inadequate during the first few years of the preacher's ministry, so it will commonly continue to be throughout his career. Initial carefulness in this respect sometimes lapses into subsequent negligence; but very rarely will it be found that the contrary is the case, that a negligent young preacher makes a careful old one.

Much, then, depends on the manner in which the young priest prepares his sermons; and the remainder of this paper will be given up to a brief discussion of the several methods of preparation that are open to his choice. It may be well to premise that by a "young priest" is meant one whose ordination dates back not further than a decade; and that what follows is based on the supposition of his having, as in the majority of cases he undoubtedly has, ample time to devote to an adequate preparation.

The least complex, and one of the least commendable, of all methods of making oneself ready for the pulpit is that which [183] consists wholly and solely in an exercise of the memory, the preparation being restricted to the simple process of getting by heart the discourse of another. Viewed as a manifestation of altruistic sentiment, such a course is perhaps not absolutely indispensable, and it must further be admitted that those who adopt it follow the letter of at least one portion of St. Paul's advice[3]—they assuredly do not preach themselves; but even at the risk of sacrificing altruism to egotism, the young preacher will do well to eschew the practice. Apart from all higher considerations, it would seem that a proper self-respect should be sufficient to deter a clergyman from playing in the pulpit the rather questionable role of another man's proxy. He becomes at best only a species of improved phonograph; and, do what he will, his utterances, like those of the phonographic cylinder, will be mechanical rather than vivified or vivifying.

If there is one dictum on the subject of public speaking that may be accepted as the expression of an ultimate truth, it is this: The orator, be he of the first-rate or the fifth-rate class, must be in earnest. Earnestness in the public speaker, like charity in the Christian, is a supreme quality, supplying at need the lack of many others, but itself replaceable by none. It is, moreover, a quality that cannot be successfully feigned or counterfeited. The most illiterate, as readily as the most cultured audience, perceive when the speaker's tones ring false; and once the discovery is made, his further speech, while it may please the fancy or tickle the ear, will be radically impotent to stir the heart or persuade the will. Now it is obvious that there is a very great, if not an insuperable difficulty in the way of preaching the sermon of an another with the genuine earnestness that naturally accompanies the delivery of one's own; and hence the clergyman who adopts this first method of preparation can scarcely hope to speak effectively.

It is conceivable, of course, that form sterility of invention, barrenness of imagination, defective mental training, or other similar causes, a preacher may be really incapable of [184] composing a fit discourse; and in so extreme a case, St. Augustine and other writers on the subject say that he may avail himself of the sermons of another; but it is quite safe to assert that, of every twenty who do so avail themselves, nineteen are lacking, not in talent, but in industry. In composition, as in every other art, facility comes with practice, and inability to write is due far more frequently to the non-exertion of mental powers than to their non-existence. That the young priest finds the composition of an original sermon a hard, tedious and irksome task may possibly be his fault, or perhaps only his misfortune; but in either case the difficulty of the work certainly does not exempt him from its performance, especially as this difficulty will surely be found to decrease with each successive trial. Aversion to intellectual labor and sustained mental effort is quite intelligible to most men, but that it forms a valid reason for neglecting plain duties will hardly be urged by any.

If we suppose the preacher to be actuated, in using the discourses of another, by a motive still more ignoble than laziness, if we conceive that he is the slave of vanity and follows this course simply to acquire the fraudulent reputation of being a great preacher, we place him at once beyond the pale of every worthy man's sympathy or respect. Of all the ridiculous mortals that "play such fantastic tricks before high heaven as make the angels weep," none, we take it, is so thoroughly and contemptibly ludicrous as the clerical jack-daw, strutting about the altar or the pulpit in the borrowed plumage of another man's eloquence. The discourses of such a preacher cannot well be other than nugatory in themselves and ultimately disastrous to the speaker; for, while on the one hand it can scarcely be expected that the blessing of God will sanctify the ministry of a plagiarist from vanity, on the other it is more than reasonably certain that sooner or later his plagiarism will be detected and his claims to genuine eloquence discredited. "What a grand sermon Father Blank preached to-day!" said an emotional lady to a companion, a few years ago, as they were leaving a city church after High Mass. "Yes," was the somewhat critical [185] and quite unemotional reply; "yes, I have always liked that sermon and I read it frequently; but I confess I prefer that other one of Father Baker's, on 'The Lessons of Autumn.'"

Viewed from the standpoint of effectiveness in the preacher, or of utility to the congregation, a fifth-rate original sermon is worth at least five times as much as a first-rate borrowed one.

The second method of preparation is substantially the same as the first, and is open to the same general objections. In this second method the process is still plagiarism, but it is the patchwork system of plagiarizing, the preacher borrowing from several sources instead of one. This plan commonly entails more labor than does that of appropriating a complete discourse, and is so far, perhaps, less reprehensible; but it is questionable whether the results achieved are at all preferable. It is certain, in fact, that many of the so-called sermons that are the outcome of this method, far from being coherent discourses in which there appear a natural connection of parts and a logical sequence of thought, are mere literary crazy quilts, wherein all order and unity are conspicuously wanting. In endeavoring to adjust properly to each other passages that were never intended to be so adjusted, the writer almost unavoidably encounters the difficulty that beset a certain preacher who once consulted Father Potter of All Hallows. "I have taken great pains," said he, "to write out twelve or thirteen pages from the various French sermon books, and now, after all my trouble, I can't make them fit."

While neither of the foregoing methods of preparing oneself to preach can be recommended as calculated to produce sermons instinct with the life and vigor that impresses men's minds and move their hearts; still in each there is positive preparation, and, at worst, the young preacher who adopts either will be likely to say something, to announce correct doctrine, and to speak in a style not unbecoming God's Word.

There is a third method, negative rather than positive, from which it is too much to expect even these meagre [sic] results. This is the summary process that precedes extempore preaching, whether that process be the reading up of a [186] subject for an hour or two previous to speaking upon it, or the meditation of the proposed discourse during a like period of time, with the possible determining of the main ideas to be developed. As for strictly extempore speaking, speaking absolutely on the spur of the moment, it is so difficult to imagine that any young priest can have the hardihood to tempt Providence by its practice, that it need not be here considered.

As a justification or an excuse for the cursory preparation given to the quasi-extemporaneous sermon, it is sometimes contended that this plan approaches more nearly than any other to the apostolic method. The answer, if answer be needed, suggests itself: the method may be an excellent one—for apostles, or for those favored with apostolic gifts and surrounded by apostolic conditions; but it is probably not the best method for even the most experienced ordinary preacher, and it is certainly the worst for the young one. Only long years of careful practice in speaking and writing can form such habits of orderly thought and clear, forcible expression as will enable a preacher to improvise a sermon bearing any claim to the title of good. As a rule, such improvisations show an utter want of order, unity, force and clearness; and not rarely they lack most of all the quality which most of all should characterize them, brevity. It can scarcely be doubted that to this radical evil of preaching without sufficient premeditation, are to be attributed fully nine-tenths of those interminable monologues, without pith or point, which a suffering laity have learned to deplore as "long" sermons—rambling discourses in which, straying from their particular themes, the speakers range in haphazard fashion over the whole field of morals; fall into continual digressions; recover themselves by innumerable repetitions; and, aiming at nothing, take an unconscionable time in hitting it. Who has not listened for an hour to a preacher who with adequate preparation could have said his say and said it far more effectively too, in twenty minutes? Lacking this preparation he delivered a "bald, disjointed chat" in which indeed may have appeared the crude, undigested materials of a discourse, but which no more merited the name [187] of a real sermon than a confused heap of bricks and mortar, boards and shingles deserves to be called a house.

Perhaps no greater service could be rendered to the long-winded extempore preacher than to present him on Monday with a verbatim published report of his discourse of the previous day. Could he be prevailed upon to read the faithful transcript of his "eloquent sermon," to peruse at leisure just what windy nothings and prosy platitudes he said, and remark just how wretchedly he said them, it is tolerably certain that his next effort would be briefer, pithier, and in every way worthier of his office. The rebuke which a Scotch preacher once received from a half-witted member of his flock is oftener merited than administered. The parson's soporific truisms, long drawn out, had gradually produced their legitimate effect of lulling the congregation one by one into placid slumber. Rousing the delinquents by a smart blow on the desk before him, the indignant preacher reprimanded them severely for their gracelessness and inattention, adding that the only one of his hearers who had not been asleep was "the poor fool, Sandy."—"Yes"; interjected Sandy, "and if I were not a fool, I'd have been asleep, too."

A young priest cannot well make a graver mistake in the matter of preaching than to adopt this off-hand style of announcing God's Word. He owes it to the sanctity of that Word, to himself, and to his auditors, be they ever so unlettered, to make each of his sermons as good as is compatible with the measure of talent with which God has dowered him. He is bound in honor and justice to become, in the degree that is possible to him, one

"whose weighty sense
Flows in fit words and heavenly eloquence;"

and no course will so surely prevent his attainment of that ideal as preaching without due reflection and previous study.

The fourth method of preparation, and the only one thus far considered that merits approval, is that followed by probably the great majority of conscientious preachers. Briefly it consists in thinking out the whole sermon, but in writing merely its substance. What it supposes and involves may, [188] perhaps, be best understood from Fénélon's description of the pulpit orator whom he commends for preaching without having written his discourse. He speaks "of a man who is well instructed and has great facility of expression; a man who has meditated deeply, in all their bearings, the principles of the subject which he is to treat; who has conceived that subject in his intellect and arranged his arguments in the clearest manner; who has prepared a certain number of striking figures and touching sentiments, which may render it sensible and bring it home to his hearers; who knows perfectly well all that he is to say and the precise place in which to say it, so that nothing remains, at the moment of delivery, but to find words with which to express himself." There can be no question as to the thoroughness of such a preparation as this; and for the experienced preacher who has had years of practice in his ministry, it is, every thing considered, probably the best of all plans. For the young preacher, however, who has not yet had this practice, there is a still better method, that indicated in the initial paragraph of this paper.

Whether the arguments urged in general against the delivery from memory of written sermons be solid or flimsy (and flimsy some of them assuredly are), few will deny that this writing and memorizing is by far the best plan of action that the young priest can adopt. Even St. Liguori, who inveighs so strongly against preachers that are slaves of their memory, took good care to allow none of his younger Fathers to ascend the pulpit without their having previously written all that they were to say. The inconveniences to which this method is liable may be real, but, at least in the case of the youthful preacher, they are more than compensated for by the sterling advantages which it undoubtedly possesses. And the more gradual is the transition from this full and complete preparation to the less elaborate method mentioned in the preceding paragraph, the greater is the likelihood of the priest's eventually becoming a ready, forcible and effective minister of the divine Word.

A good formula for the actual composition of the sermon [189] is: some reading, more thinking, careful writing, and no "cribbing." Once the subject has been chosen, and the particular point of view from which it is to be treated determined, it will generally be found beneficial to read what has been written on the same theme by one or several good authors, and to study with the aid of a concordance those portions of Sacred Scripture which bear a special reference to the matter in hand. Having thus acquired an abundance of ideas relative to the subject, our young priest will do well to put aside his books and meditate these ideas, turning them over in his mind, observing how they adjust themselves to his preconceived notions, dwelling on the cognate sentiments which they suggest—in a word, digesting what he has read until it assimilates with his previous knowledge and becomes his own. Whether it be carried on currently with the writing or before that is begun, meditation is the most important and should be the lengthiest process in the building up of a discourse. It is superfluous to add that the more care the writer gives to the expression of his thought, the better will be his sermon. Knowing the mental status of the congregation whom he is to address, and the general culture, or want of it, that characterizes them, he will, of course, adapt his language, figures, allusions and illustrations to their particular capacities; but no degree of illiterateness in a prospective audience justifies negligence, either in the form of the discourse as a whole, or in the structure of its component parts. There is no more pernicious mistake than to suppose that a plain, simple, "common sense" instruction is removed from the sphere of rhetoric, or is not amenable to the laws of thought and expression. Apart from Scriptural texts, quotations should not be multiplied, and those employed should be credited to their proper sources. Stripped of all euphemistic phraseology, plagiarism is theft. No man, perhaps, can be original in what he says; but every man can and should be original in his way of saying it. Let the skeleton of his thought come from where it may, the flesh and blood that clothe it should be a part of himself.

On the degree of originality, thus understood, that a sermon [190] possesses, depends in a great measure the facility or difficulty of committing it to memory. The more of one's own and the fewer of other men's sentences it contains, the more readily will it be committed. And here it is to be remarked that the stereotyped criticism, "the preacher who delivers his sermon from memory has the appearance of a schoolboy reciting his task," if applicable at all, applies to those only who follow the first or second method of preparation which we have discussed, those who preach the sermons of others. Between the man who delivers his own sentiments and the schoolboy who recites the words of his text-book, there is no parallel, deadly or otherwise. The difficulty of learning a sermon after one has composed it has been a good deal exaggerated. Not a few preachers experience no difficulty whatever; they know their sermon as soon as they have completed its revision. These, perhaps, are exceptional cases; but, given a discourse of ordinary length, representing the outcome of a man's own earnest thought and studied composition, and a very few hours will suffice to memorize it so thoroughly that its delivery may be characterized by all the grace, ease and apparent spontaneity that mark the best extemporaneous speaking, so thoroughly, indeed, that the preacher may interpolate any striking thought that occurs to him on the spur of the moment, and then resume the thread of the original discourse without trouble or hesitation.

In any case, however great the difficulty experienced, either in writing or memorizing his sermon, the young priest will be amply rewarded therefor [sic] by the consciousness that, in ascending the pulpit to acquit himself of one of the most august of sacerdotal functions, he is free from the irreverence that cannot but attach to careless preparation, and is doing his best to promote the glory of God and secure the salvation of souls. True, after all is said and done, it is God alone who fructifies the sermon; but it is to be remembered that, if God gives the increase, the planting and watering is the work of the preacher. Fac tua, Deus sua faciet.

A. B. O'Neill, C.S.C.

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Footnotes:

1. Mark xvi, 15.

2. Jerem. xlviii, 10.

3. II Cor. iv, 5.

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Source: Arthur Barry O'Neill, "Young Preachers Careful and Careless," American Ecclesiastical Review 8 (March 1893): 180–190.