Audio Link for my homily, "You are who you say He is."
Preached at Our Lady of the Rosary in NOLA June 19, 2016.
N.B. If you listen to this homily, please leave me some feedback on my delivery, i.e., pacing, pronunciation, etc. This felt weird while I was preaching it (?).
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Preached at Our Lady of the Rosary in NOLA June 19, 2016.
N.B. If you listen to this homily, please leave me some feedback on my delivery, i.e., pacing, pronunciation, etc. This felt weird while I was preaching it (?).
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First, I really liked reading this homily. I found it spiritually-challenging and interesting to read. However, when I listened to it I found myself laughing periodically (or more than periodically). The delivery was a tad over-the-top-dramatic in the first few minutes. There should have been a transition from that tone, but it kept creeping back in to your delivery (in the first half). I didn't believe you - I didn't believe you meant or believed what you were saying. And you put a lot of difficult-to-enunciate sounds together in clumps, so at times you sounded like you'd just had dental surgery (or had one too many cocktails before Mass). By the second half, most of this had cleared up, but you were still more choppy than usual. Part of it is that I know how you speak/sound, having talked to you often enough, and it didn't sound like you! You lost your Southern on a few words here and there, and your typical melodic pacing/phrasing just wasn't there. It's been a few weeks since you've preached at OLR, so maybe you were just a little rusty.
ReplyDeleteThe problem was that I didn't rehearse before I preached. . .always a no-no. I meant for the first paragraph to come off sounding like I was serious about the dreary view of Christian life. I think it may have sounded funny to you b/c you know me so well!
DeleteThanks the the feedback!
I've listened to it just because you've asked. I've stopped listening to your homilies some time ago since I came to the conclusion that they are much better read than heard. To my ear, you've preached it more or less like you did every other one...your tone is professorial, like you're lecturing, and don't seem to suit your well-crafted, carefully structured and literary homilies. For me it's just a matter of taste. I enjoy your homilies (...in written form) more than any other I remember having heard from the pew. But for my money, preached homilies should be either entirely spontaneous or at the most, oriented by cue cards or notes, not the entire text read. Not sure it helps you in any way Fr., but it's what comes from the top of my mind right now...
ReplyDeleteYou're touching on a LONG argument within the homiletics community: text or no text. I am squarely in the text camp. . .1). no text preachers tend to drone on and on looking for a point and an ending; 2). they develop the habit of not preparing their homilies, gambling on "inspiration" when they get to the pulpit; 3). w/o the discipline of a written homily text, these guys tend to preach the same homily over and over again; and 4). folks tend to cut you some slack when they know that your homily is going to be 10 - 11 mins long every time. . .no text homilies cannot guarantee that!
DeleteAnd thank you, Matheus for your feedback! Your feedback is always welcomed here. . .
DeleteYou're welcome Fr.; for the record, I hadn't expressed myself properly on my previous comment when I wrote "entirely spontaneous". I completely agree with your points. Homily preparation also prevents those cringe-inducing pre-homily "chats" with the audience for the audience to get to know how cool the priest is because he watches sports or Star Wars or the TV soap opera's last chapter... What I meant is that I don't think the text homily should be recited like a poem, but the preacher could "ad-lib" it somehow, giving it a more spontaneous, "informal" presentation.
DeleteI agree completely. . .that sort of skill take time to master!
DeleteOn this discussion - you preach differently at OLR versus NDS. And the visuals make a big difference as well: at OLR you are literally above everyone, and your delivery is different, more elevated; at NDS you seem more relaxed and more "on-level" with your listeners. I agree with Matheus in that I really dislike homilies that are obviously read word for word. Reading a homily like you aren't reading it does take skill and practice, and you typically pull it off pretty well. In general, though, I have discovered that I don't like listening to the homilies you preach at OLR - I think the acoustics require you to adjust your delivery in such a way that it does come off as "professorial."
DeleteFr Powell
ReplyDeleteI thought this homily was excellent - delivery, pacing, tone...all appropriate for the content you preaching on. It's been a while since I've visited, but I will now be back regularly. A+
Jim G
Cordova, Tn.
Thanks, Jim! Y'all come. . .
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