What is a homily?

I posted this a couple of months ago.  It is my feeling that Christianity is not doing enough to speak to the issues that people face today.  Instead we offer bland platitudes.  When things go bad we say "we'll pray for you" and when things go well we say "God is good".  Sometimes we'll reverse that and say "God is good" when things go bad just to sound profound.  None of which rises above the level of insight you'd get from a Hallmark greeting card.

One of the guys at RCIA likes to tell a story about a sermon he heard one time from Bishop Galante who picked up the Bible and said "The words written in this Bible are more current than the words written on the paper on your doorstep this morning."  That's a pretty powerful statement about the relevance of God's word in our lives.  If we say that God's Word is alive, then it is in motion. It is constantly stretching Itself (or actually "Himself") into new corners of our world the way that a tree's roots expand into the soil where it's planted.

Last week someone animated by the anger of the Black Lives Matter movement killed five police officers in Dallas and injured nine others.  The readings that weekend were about the Good Samaritan which starts with a pointed question: "Who is my neighbor?".  One would think that such a reading coming only a few days after a public shooting and the outpouring of grief and anger would prove a rich ground for explaining how Christianity can speak to today's world.  If the words of the Bible are "more current than the words written on the paper on your doorstep" then surely there's something to learn from this.  We could consider, for instance

• Who's my neighbor?
• Would the Black Lives Matter protestors consider the Police to be their neighbors?  Should they?
• Would the Police consider the Black Lives Matter protestors to be their neighbors? Should they?
• What do the rest of the citizens make of those groups?  A pox on both their houses?
• What about racism in America?  Do we focus on every real and perceived incident of racism, just get over it because it's not as bad as Jim Crow or forget about it all to form a united front against ISIS?

 Instead we got some bland historical-critical analysis of who "Samaritans" were and who "priests" were.  It was a homily that could have been given in any year in any country in any parish, Catholic or not.  Indeed, I would expect that it was written a few years ago and was simply dusted off for last Sunday's Mass.  To be fair to the person who delivered it, a "homily" is supposed to be an explanation of the readings, but it doesn't seem to be consistent with the idea that the Gospel is "more current than the words written in the newspaper this morning" to retread for the thousandth time what things were like in First Century Palestine. Indeed, it seems to suggest that the Gospel is primarily a historical document, one that we can enter into but which can't enter into our lives.  Kind of like Homer's Odyssey or Gone with the Wind.

So let's take a look at the history.  Justin Martyr wrote about the Mass in the Second Century.  He mentions in his First Apology that And on the day called Sunday,(1) all who live in cities or in the country gather together to one place, and the memoirs of the apostles or the writings of the prophets are read, as long as time permits; then, when the reader has ceased, the president verbally instructs, and exhorts to the imitation of these good things.

Justin Martry was born in 100AD and died in 165AD.  So we was roughly one-hundred years removed from the events of Jesus' time.  He was born in Samaria and lived in the post-Temple era.  That means that when he was alive there were no Sadducees.  The fight between the Jews and the Samaritans was pretty much over because both sides "lost" to the Romans. The Pharisees were the only surviving branch of Judaism and they were scattered.  He simply lived in a different era.  Things like "Temple Sacrifice" had a historical, but not emotional impact on him.  The situation of Jesus' time was relatively fresh: the language would be familiar and the geographical setting would be familiar, but the exact situation would be only known in family verbal history.

In his apology, he doesn't say "The president explains what a 'Sadducee' is and why Jesus was so mad at them".  He doesn't say "The president explains where Jesus landed on the Pharisee/Sadducee divide".  He doesn't say "The president explains why Jesus is taking the side of the Samaritans, proving that we're better than the Jews".   Those concerns were history.  Instead "The president verbally instructs and exhorts to the imitation of these good things."

Indeed, in Luke's Gospel, you may notice that Luke never mentions such things as "Pharisees", "Levites", or "Sadducees".  Luke was writing to a gentile audience, so he just called them all "Jews" because the finer shades of distinction don't matter.

But that's all we care about.  Who were the Samaritans? Who were the Herodians?  What did Jesus think of the Temple?  What year was Daniel written?  Who were the Phillipians?  Did Peter really write the letters with his name on them?

It's obvious why Catholic priests and Deacons do this.  They are hiding behind the Bible.  Trained from an early age to avoid confrontation, they quickly realize that the Bible doesn't have much to say about Abortion, Contraception, Global Warming, gay marriage or Barack Obama.  Actually, it does have a few things to say about some of those things but we can cleverly snip those out of our Sunday readings.  So historical analysis of the various factions at work in Jesus' day takes the place of any kind of thoughtful words that apply to the world we live in.  Christianity is reduced to a historical preservation society. 

So, in Justin Martyr's day, the post-Gospel exhortation was an indication as to how to hear and apply the Gospel.  And today the post-Gospel exhortation is still about how people in the first or second century would hear and apply the Gospel. 

I guess Bishop Galante was wrong.  The newspaper and TV is the place to learn about navigating world today.  We can put down the Bible and pick up Rolling Stone and National Review, depending on our preference.