Guest post by David Smith.

We measure things.  It is one of the things humans do. We do it mostly because we plan to use the things we measure.

Units of measurements seem to be of two kinds: natural/intuitive and artificial/synthetic.  Natural ones came first.  Feet are based on an average foot (mine, I say without bragging, is exactly one foot long – including the size 10 shoe. This makes for a useful way to walk off distances.)  Cubits based on an average forearm of about a foot and a half.  An inch is about the length of a thumb knuckle.

The metric system, on the other hand, is artificial/synthetic, based on…something. (I don’t know what.)  Built on our numbering system, it is more easily used in science and math.

The only area where a natural/intuitive system still prevails uncontested in its traditional un-metricized form is our measurement of time.  Natural constants still govern here. A year is one revolution in earth’s orbit around the sun: one cycle of seasons.  A day is one rotation on the earth’s axis: one cycle of light and darkness.  In between a year and a day we have more artificial measures: months and weeks.  And below the day, we have sub-divisions of hour, minute, and second.

Our awareness of the passage of time is a difficulty for us. In late afternoon we ask “where has the day gone?”  Our clocks tell us, but we are still surprised.

Years are even more so.  On our birthdays and New Year’s Day, we celebrate or mourn the elusive passing of another year; we ponder, for a day, the mysterious year ahead, before moving on into uncharted daily existence.

Even at the much smaller scale, it is hard to track time without mechanical assistance.  Try to concentrate on a single subject or thought for a full minute, without looking at a clock. For me, distractions invariably arise, especially the distraction of wondering how much of the minute has elapsed.  To some extent, this is the problem of reverse concentration: trying not to think of an elephant.

But the crux of the problem is the difficulty of measuring time with our mind alone.  The only way I can make myself aware of the passage of a minute is to count to 60. In other words, to count seconds.

Why are seconds so much easier for us to embrace than any larger measure of time?  Check your pulse. If you are healthy and resting, your heartbeat should be right around 60 beats per minute: a very natural standard.

Tiny, fragile, elusive, the second is nonetheless the most tangible form in which we can consciously confront time. It cannot be an accident that it is also the measure of our life blood nourishing our very existence.  The last second-long heartbeat is the end of our earthly life. And long before our birth, the ultrasound screen displays the second-long beats of our hearts that mark what we already are and will become.

The passage of time is thus the passage of life.  Prisoners are said to count the days of their sentences by chalk marks on the cell wall.  If they didn’t do so, they might lose track of the passage of time and their sentences would become infinite.

Every second is a gift from God.  This can be said of each day, week, month and year, of course, but they slip past us.   Such gifts deserve thanks.  It is appropriate to try to insert a prayer of thanksgiving into every second.  But is it possible?

I am trying.  I find that simply saying or thinking “Thank you, Lord” can be done in about a second.  I can’t do it every second, of course.  But I can do it often.

And I can try to live my life in such a way that I feel grateful for every second.  Some days this is easier than others.  But I can try. Indeed, because I can try, I must try.

I certainly need the “sweet hour of prayer.”  But it seems I also need a steady supply of sacred seconds of prayer. Fortunately, I have so many occasions of gratitude: my loving wife by my side, a photo of my darling daughter and my magnificent grandsons, a beautiful hibiscus blossoming in the garden…and my beating heart; like all of them, contingent on God’s grace. I only need to remember to say “Thank you, Lord” at each such moment and my day is transformed into a happy thanksgiving.

David Smith is an old man but a young Catholic. He writes on the blog benfiniti.com.

Guest post by Christine Cooney.

When I was a child our family had a short walnut bookcase in our narrow, ell-shaped hallway. The top shelf was filled with a brightly colored ChildCraft collection put out by World Book Encyclopedia. The bottom shelf held the more “adult” brown and black encyclopedia set. The bookcase, and its noble contents, arrived mysteriously. No brown packaging to herald an unpacking and no plaid clad encyclopedia salesman at our door. We were a lower middle-class neighborhood. I can’t imagine how my parents made the room in their budget, even on an installment plan, to make the purchase.

And yet, not only did they make room in their budget, but they made room in the small 1400 square foot home, tucking the collection into the only hallway of the house. Any of us, to leave our bedrooms, would necessarily need to walk by the collection of books. My parents did not make any proclamations to us. No requirements to read such and such volume, or to read X many pages each day.

It was a matter of time before anyone could find me, prostrate in the hallway, book spread out in front of me, blocking passage through the narrow hall. I spent hours paging through the green colored, “Stories and Fables”; or paging through the dark blue volume, full of things to “Make and Do” laying out my plans for the next opportune moment. I read poems, contemplated puzzles, and was fascinated by the relationship between Father Christmas/St. Nick/Santa Claus.

The “older” brown encyclopedias were worth a read, too. They didn’t have quite the power over me, but provided me with plenty of reading trails to follow. More interesting than the actual encyclopedia article was the small paragraph following the articles in question: “Related articles.” You could start out with a state report on Ohio, fly with the Wright Brothers to North Carolina, before finally witnessing in wonder the explosion of the Hindenburg, as portrayed in the accompanying black and white photographs.

I don’t have a set of encyclopedias in my own house. I tried a set of ChildCraft books but they didn’t have the same appeal to my own children as they did to me, and so I let them go for a song at a quaint little book fair where my friends and I bring books we no longer need and wind up leaving with twice as many books we likely don’t need.

Which is to say my bookshelves are packed full. We even have loosely “dedicated shelves” for various interests. Our history collection – both fiction and non-fiction – resides on a midsize shelf situated in a corner of our home’s “library.” In that same room, we have a science bookcase; which should not be confused with the shelf in another, more heavily windowed room, containing our nature guides. The top two shelves of  the science case is dedicated to art. It also, rather conveniently, has space for colored pencils and paper, too. Two book cases are situated in our family room. They hold poetry, our favorite picture books, and plenty of middle grade classics – think Little House on the Prairie, Roald Dahl, the entire Anne of Green Gables series, and Little Britches.

Going back to the “library” we have a wall dedicated to the classics, both fiction and spiritual. On one overcrowded shelf, a book by Fr. Schall sits. It’s been read once, but is waiting to be read at least one more time. Another Sort of Learning is different from the encyclopedia in that it doesn’t limit itself to scientific query nor does it provide mere summary information.

Rather, Schall tries to help us understand why we might be “Still Perplexed Even in College;” helping us to understand what a few people might be questioning, “Why Read?”

From there he helps us to discover, through several essays, “Books We Will Never Be Assigned” [sic]. In this part of the book, he uncovers “The Supernatural Destiny of Man” and the eternal paradox, “Oddness and Sanity.”

Finally, Fr. Schall asks, “Have You Thought about It This Way?” In this section he expounds on “The Recovery of Permanent Things” and attempts to explain “What Is a Lecture?”

The essays, if you can believe it, aren’t necessarily the best part of this compendium of essays. Rather, at the end of each essay, the good Fr. Schall, places a list of books – 10 or 20, but sometimes more and sometimes less – for further reading. It is not unlike the “Related articles” blurb found at the end of my beloved WorldBook Encyclopedia entries. These are better, though, as they aren’t merely scientific articles to tantalize, but  entire books to feed the mind and soul.

This book, Another Sort of Learning, isn’t new. It was first published in 1988, just 10 or so years after that encyclopedic treasure trove arrived at my childhood home. And yet, neither his essays, nor the lists books have expired. Unless you find such familiar names as C. S. Lewis, Flannery O’Connor, and Joseph Pieper to be irrelevant.

It’s always a delight when I happen upon a book in a list of Schall’s that I already own, even if it’s buried on a shelf still waiting to be read. It’s even more delightful if I have discovered I have already read one of his recommendations. It makes me hope that, at least in one part of my self education, I have taken a good and proper path. As it is, I am not seeking either a well worn path or a Road Less Traveled. It doesn’t make much difference to me the number of people traveling a particular way. I am bound to follow, a road relatively straight and narrow.

Predominately, I am hoping to make my way to the good and narrow gate at the end.

Christine Cooney lives in Columbus, Ohio with her husband and children. She blogs at EpiphaniesofBeauty.com.

Guest post by Fr. Jonathan Mitchican.

Some years ago, I wandered into Sunday Mass at a Catholic parish not far from where I lived. I was a member of the clergy of another Christian community then, but I had a strong sense that had been growing in me for years that God wanted me to become Catholic. It had taken me a long time to get up the courage to go to Mass, but there I was. Things seemed to start off alright even though I was not familiar with the music or some of the responses, but then the priest began to preach. His homily was staid and not well thought out. He told an anecdote about his mother that I knew for a fact was not original because I had heard another preacher use it not long before, attributing it to an anonymous author on the internet. Then he intimated that perhaps Jesus was not really completely divine and told us that the miracle of the feeding of the five thousand was not actually a miracle at all, that everyone just shared really well. The homily was atrocious in both delivery and content, but not nearly as atrocious as the celebration of the Eucharist that followed which involved the priest inviting a sixteen or seventeen year old kid to pull the Sacrament out of the tabernacle for him and then distribute it to the faithful while dressed in shorts, flip flops, and a “Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles” t-shirt.

I left that Mass distraught and convinced that I could never become Catholic. Fortunately, God knew better and led me home to the Church anyway. Obviously, the most troubling part of that Mass was the way the Sacrament was treated, not the terrible homily that preceded it. Looking back now though, I can see how the two are related. To be sure, in the celebration of the Mass it is the Sacrament that is absolutely paramount, but there is a direct line between bad preaching and bad practices regarding the Sacrament. If we do not take the Word of God seriously in the pulpit, eventually we will stop taking it seriously at the altar as well.

It is no secret that there is a crisis in Catholic preaching today. There is a general sense amongst many of the laity that Catholic priests simply are not able to preach well. People complain that homilies are boring and increasingly out of touch with the experiences of everyday life.

Some of this reaction is almost certainly attributable to the influence of many Protestant traditions in which the sermon serves not as the appetizer but the main course of worship. Some of it is probably also a product of the entertainment-driven media culture we all now live in that has caused our attention spans to become embarrassingly thin. As a priest myself who preaches regularly, I am fully aware of my limitations and the fact that I can be boring and sometimes seem pedantic, especially when compared with the latest entertainment, so I am inclined to want to pin much of the problem there.

But we are fooling ourselves if we do not acknowledge that our preaching crisis also stems from the attitude that many of us priests imbibed during our formation that preaching does not matter. It is mere icing on the liturgical cake. All that really matters are the Sacraments, not our prattle leading up to them. Besides which, given the shortage of priests today and the incredibly high set of demands placed on the average parish priest’s schedule, there really is no time to prepare for a homily.

This attitude is antithetical to what the Catholic Church teaches about the importance of preaching. In Dei Verbum, the Second Vatican Council’s Dogmatic Constitution on Divine Revelation, preaching is strongly emphasized as the tool that binds us to the preaching of the apostles. The teaching of the apostles “was to be preserved by an unending succession of preachers until the end of time.” Bishops in particular have been given “the sure gift of truth” so that they may preach. Preaching is how the Word of God found in Scripture is made clear. Of all the ways in which the Church seeks to teach and share the Gospel, “the liturgical homily must hold the foremost place.” The Council Fathers make similar statements in other documents as well, even going so far at one point as to say that “the first task of priests as co-workers with the bishops is to preach the Word of God to all” (Presbyterum Ordinis). The Catechism echoes all of this, quoting from Dei Verbum but adding that the homily is “an exhortation to accept this Word [the Scripture just heard] as what it truly is, the Word of God, and to put it into practice” (CCC 1349).

The early Church Fathers saw preaching in an even more refined light. To them, it was an art form, not unlike medicine which they also viewed as a more creative pursuit than we tend to see it as today. In his second Oration, St. Gregory of Nazianzus refers to priests as “physicians of the soul.” He says of preaching, “The scope of our art is to provide the soul with wings, to rescue it from the world and give it to God, and to watch over that which is in His image, if it abides, to take it by the hand, if it is in danger, or restore it, if ruined, to make Christ dwell in the heart by the Spirit; and, in short, to deify, and to pour heavenly bliss upon, one who belongs to the heavenly host.” It is hard to imagine preaching alone accomplishing all of this–and to be sure, Gregory means it not in isolation but as a part of the whole practice of pastoral ministry–but what this emphasizes unmistakably is the power of preaching. It is not merely a human activity, but one that, when exercised properly, brings divine healing to those who hear it.

For the Fathers, the art of preaching is not in the content of the homily, which is always to come from the unchanging deposit of faith, but from the way in which the message is applied. A homily is not like any other piece of writing that one might do. It is not even really like a speech, other than in the sense that it is meant to be spoken aloud and not merely to be read from the page. A homily is meant to be given to a specific people. It is the preacher’s job to take the Word of God and apply it appropriately to the group of people that has gathered for the Mass. It is non-transferable from place to place.

This means that, ideally, the priest needs to know the people. He needs to have some sense of their hopes and fears, their temptations and their virtues, what they accept easily and what they struggle to believe. The analogical and typological readings of Scripture given by the Fathers often reveal just how multivalent and vital Scripture can be. The same passage of Scripture can be used to comfort, to delight, to chastise, or to inspire, depending on how it is applied. Therefore, the responsibility placed on the priest or the deacon who preaches is a great one. He must choose carefully.

As with any art form, creativity in preaching is crucial. It is a dangerous thing, to be sure, to tell preachers that they need to be creative. Obviously, that becomes problematic quickly if creativity is seen as a license to avoid orthodoxy. But again, proper creativity in preaching comes not in the content but in the approach. What kind of examples does the preacher use? Does he lead people deeper into the mystery of God or is he only self-referential? What tone is set by the way the preacher uses his voice, where he allows it to rise or fall? Does he take account of the reactions of people in the room while he is speaking? Does he have a clear enough sense of where he is going that he can step away from his text if the Spirit leads him to do so?

What all of this amounts to is that preaching forms a kind of dynamic relationship. Both the preacher and the congregation have to be able to trust one another as the homily progresses. Indeed, it is in that exchange that not only the people grow in faith but so does the preacher. “Just as you are hungry to listen to me, so am I hungry to preach to you,” says St. John Chrysostom, “My congregation is my only glory.”

So what prevents this kind of preaching from happening in Catholic parish life today? To be blunt, nothing but our own unwillingness to embrace it.

Of course, there are things that get in the way. It is hard to create an intimate preaching dynamic in a parish with many thousands of families and only one or two priests on staff. Likewise, there are uncontrollable variables that the preacher cannot always prepare for, like large numbers of newcomers or visitors or a lack of familiarity with the language spoken by most of the people in the room. None of this, however, relieves us as clergy of the responsibility of trying to cultivate the art of preaching in our ministries to the best of our ability.

Some people might object that this understanding of preaching is neglectful of the centrality of the Eucharist, but as the USCCB has pointed out, “In the Eucharistic celebration the homily points to the presence of God in people’s lives and then leads a congregation into the Eucharist, providing, as it were, the motive for celebrating the Eucharist in this time and place” (Fulfilled in Your Hearing). This too is part of the art practiced by the preacher, that the homily not become its own animal–easily excised and isolated from the rest of the Mass–but that it be of such a nature that the Eucharist flows naturally from it. It has always been something of a puzzle to me that some Protestant groups refer to the response of faith generated by the Sunday sermon as an “altar call” when they vociferously deny that they have anything that could be called an altar. In the Catholic Church, we worship at the true altar upon which the true Lord of heaven and earth offers Himself up on our behalf. If our preaching does not leave people yearning to be fed at that altar, we are not doing our jobs.

There is no reason for Catholic preaching to be stale or boring. There is every reason for it to be the most dynamic and powerful preaching around. Preaching belongs properly to the Catholic Church. The first pope was, after all, a fairly excellent preacher (cf. Acts of the Apostles 2:14-41). One of the greatest revivals of orthodox faith in the history of the Church was brought about by St. Dominic and his followers whom he dared to call the Order of Preachers. The Word of God itself, found in Holy Scripture and Sacred Tradition, is entrusted to the Catholic Church. The Bible is a Catholic text.

The Church has long been a patron of the arts. May she be renewed in that most fundamental of Gospel-imparting arts, preaching itself, and may we do all we can in the Church to support a culture that makes solid, powerful preaching a bedrock expectation.

Fr. Jonathan Mitchican is Chaplain at St. John XXIII College Preparatory in Katy, TX and the host of the podcast God and Comics (godandcomics.com).