Preach the Complete Truth

Third Sunday in Ordinary Time Year C

This passage has often been cited as a model for preachers to keep their sermons short and sweet. If you had paid attention to the last line of the passage, many have claimed that this is indeed the shortest sermon ever delivered: “This text is being fulfilled today even as you listen.” But such a claim is grossly inaccurate and in fact, quite mischievous. It is clear that when we read the rest of the text in this pericope, our Lord has much more to say. And it would be stretching it to see how our Lord won the approval of the audience and caused them to be “astonished by the gracious words that came from His lips,” with just this one liner. The “gracious words” here, would obviously point to other things which our Lord said, as evidenced by our Lord’s use of two Old Testament illustrations if you read the rest of the following verses, which are not included in our lectionary selection.

Pope Francis has often reiterated his preference for brevity in preaching, which in his opinion, should not exceed 10 minutes. By the number of likes and retweets we see in social media whenever the pontiff’s advice on succinct preaching is reported, we get the impression that many Catholics are certainly in support of this guidance and show us how little our well-thought-out homilies are appreciated by the masses.

But should our homilies be solely measured by their length? It is good to note that our Lord was not known for the brevity of His Sermons. We have both the Sermon on the Mount (St Matthew’s Gospel), which stretches across three chapters, and the parallel albeit shorter Sermon on the Plain (St Luke’s version), as proof that our Lord did deliver lengthy sermons when necessary. His lengthy discourses in the Fourth Gospel are further evidence of this point.

In short, it is always much more effective if you can say things in a far more efficient way with less verbosity, but brevity can never be the sole or the most important criterion. In fact, I dare say that our generation suffers more from a lack of hearing the Word than it does from over-hearing it. Our problem is not “too much” of the Word of God” but rather “too little.” Our generation can sit through a two-hour or sometimes three-hour movie, a student can endure an hour-long lecture involving complex ideas, a young person can be totally engrossed in his gaming for hours on end without requiring any break, and yet, find a ten to fifteen minutes homily something beyond endurance.

A good homily is never to be measured by its brevity or entertainment quality but by how it corresponds with God’s agenda as in the case of our Lord’s preaching in today’s passage. Our Lord was not just spewing nice platitudes and entertaining anecdotes. He was setting out not His own agenda but God’s programme for His ministry which He faithfully desired to adhere to. So how long should a sermon or homily take? As long as it is necessary to convey what God wishes to say to His people, and no clock is going to put a cap on that.

Returning to our gospel passage and our Lord’s supposed short 10 seconds sermon, it is good to remember who Jesus is, which no one else can claim to be. It would seem from the brevity of our Lord’s sermon that the words of the prophet Isaiah which our Lord had just read were sufficient and our Lord only needed to declare that if His congregation wished to understand its meaning, they only had to look at Him. Our Lord, the Word Enfleshed, is the living fulfilment of that message. So, our Lord has the sole privilege of delivering the shortest 10 seconds homily, only because He is the Word. The rest of us poor preachers need more time to get the message across, precisely because we are not the Word, merely its servants.

The homily provides an unmatched opportunity for us priests to remind or inform our congregation what exactly we believe, and why. It is said that St Dominic often reminded his confreres in the Order of Preachers that they only had to tasks – to speak with God or to speak about God. Notice what’s missing from this formula? The homily is not meant for the priest to speak about himself. It is not meant to entertain, to provide practical self-help or adapt to your comfort level. It is a chance for us to provide a clear, unafraid, proclamation of the fullness of the Truths taught by the Scriptures and the Church which guards the deposit of faith. We may or may not need 30 minutes to achieve that, but we do need to make sure that what is said is distinctively and challengingly Catholic.

Just before Christmas last year, Elon Musk tweeted a photo of two piles of documents which were meant to be passed by the US Congress to ensure that their government did not shut down. One was a voluminous bill with thousands of pages and the second was just a thin tiny fraction of the former with just over one hundred pages. The message of the juxtaposition was clear and simple. Smaller, thinner, less is better. A Catholic apologist affixed his own commentary to the picture. The thicker pile represented the deposit of faith of the Catholic Church while the vastly thinner pile represented the Protestant watered down version. When it comes to matters of faith, the Word of God, more is always far superior than lesser.

On this Sunday of the Word of God, let us make it our resolution to be read more, immerse ourselves deeper, and listen more attentively to the Word of God. Lesser isn’t better. In fact, we may spiritually die from being impoverished in reading and hearing the Word of God being proclaimed and preached. Instead of demanding for shortcuts and soundbites, let us be hungry for the full and complete Truth. God intended to give us solid food, let’s not settle for baby’s mushy gruel. He wants to reveal to us the complete Truth, let’s not be satisfied with partial truths. There will always be depths of God’s revelation that needs to be plunged, mysteries that need to be explored, theological understanding that could be better expounded. Likewise, in sharing the Catholic faith with others, we should always resist the temptation of dumbing-down the message of Christ. People are hungering for the complete Truth, don’t give them sound bites. It’s either the complete thing that we must demand for or it’s a fake.