A starting point that the Sunday community is not always ready, willing, or able to offer praise and thanksgiving. The homily may become the connection from which a community may be able to look up from their concerns and offer them to God:
[14] The community that gathers Sunday after Sunday comes together to offer God praise and thanksgiving, or at least to await a word that will give a meaning to their lives and enable them to celebrate Eucharist. What the preacher can do best of all at this time and in this place is to enable this community to celebrate by offering them a word in which they can recognize their own concerns and God’s concern for them.
The mediation keeps the people aware of Real Presence, while it assists others in finding God’s presence in their daily lives. From my experience in parishes, people who find that presence, that reason for rejoicing, is not a given. The homily can serve as a means of not only breaking open the Word, but breaking open people’s lives so God may be found therin:
[15] The preacher acts as a mediator, making connections between the real lives of people who believe in Jesus Christ but are not always sure what difference faith can make in their lives, and the God who calls us into ever deeper communion with himself and with one another. Especially in the Eucharistic celebration, the sign of God’s saving presence among his people, the preacher is called to point to the signs of God’s presence in the lives of his people so that, in joyous recognition of that presence, they may join the angels and saints to proclaim God’s glory and sing with them their unending hymn of praise.
This concludes the fifteen-section examination of the assembly. Any thoughts before we move on to the preacher?
(All texts from Fulfilled in Your Hearing are copyright © 1982 USCCB. All rights reserved. Used with permission.)
Catholic Sensibility 