The Priestly Vocation Part 8

In the case of many of our less formal sermons, the delivery follows close on the first preparation, and even that has to be much curtailed.

Such are the few words which we deliver to Holy Family meetings, or other Confraternities, and short addresses at weekday evening services.

The Sunday catechetical instruction forms a subject by itself, and the idea that it can be efficiently performed with little or no preparation should be strongly deprecated. It is an opportunity of doing great things for the children, and implanting in their minds ideas which will last them through life, and often be, as it were, their sheet-anchor to keep them to their religion in after years, in times of stress and temptation, or call them back to it if they have unhappily fallen away.

The responsibility of such an opportunity is great, and no trouble should be too great to secure its effective performance.

We now come to the time of the sermon's delivery. To some the quarter of an hour immediately before ascending the pulpit is the most important part of the preparation; to all it is an important part. It is essential that we should begin with our mind full of our subject. A very little practice will enable us to feel at home in the pulpit once we have begun, and we shall soon acquire self-command and power to collect our thoughts there. Nevertheless, we shall often forget many things which we have thought of during our preparation, while other thoughts will suggest themselves in most unexpected fashion. A celebrated French preacher once said that he had never ended a sermon without finding that he had omitted most of what he had intended to say, and said much that he had not intended. [6] It matters not: what matters is that when the priest is speaking he should be full of his subject, earnest, enthusiastic, speaking straight from his heart, and above all things zealous for the good of his hearers.

Then let his declamation be simple, earnest, natural. The inflated and artificial style of oratory, current until almost modern times, would to-day be wholly out of place. At best it was ill-suited to so lofty a purpose, and St. Alphonsus only followed the lead of many saints and others in warning the preacher against the style it naturally led to.

The present simplicity of taste is far more in keeping with the sacredness of the work. Let the priest say what he means and mean what he says, and the intrinsic force and sacredness of his words will be better than all rhetoric. Above all, let there be no affectation of manner or self-consciousness, which does so much to mar the effect of a sermon. By all means, however, let him practise clearness of utterance.

It is very trying to a congregation to sit before a preacher whom they cannot hear; and especially when such happens through the preacher's neglect of the ordinary rules of elocution. Nor does it usually require any greater effort on the part of the preacher to make himself intelligible. Clearness does not always necessitate loudness, nor is it always achieved by it. A careful utterance in a suitable pitch is really all that is required; and the people should be spared the annoyance of listening to a preacher who clips his words, or only partially p.r.o.nounces them, or drops his voice so that the last syllable of a word or the last word of a sentence is inaudible: all these faults make it an effort to follow him. And if there is any weakness in the initial _h_ or the final _g_ of a word, the effect is far from pleasing. In order to draw fruit from a sermon, one wants to be able to follow it _without effort_, and to be undisturbed by fault or peculiarities of enunciation.

These ends cannot be attained unless the preacher will take some trouble; but with a little trouble it can easily be done. Nevertheless, it often is _not_ done. [7]

The preacher should likewise make an effort to get over his natural shyness and disinclination to use his hands. This will go of its own accord as soon as he has had sufficient practice to feel at home in the pulpit. We do not wish to gesticulate so much as the French priests do-- it is not in accordance with the genius of our people; and what is suitable in one country is out of place in another. Still less do we want any forced or unnatural gesticulation. At first we should do with very little. Many Englishmen do always with very little. But in most cases, it comes natural after a time to use the hands, and when it is natural, it increases greatly the force of our words.

A few remarks should be made as to the length of time at which to aim.

It is safe to say that the pressure of modern life calls for shorter sermons than our fathers were accustomed to. The practice of five-minute sermons at the Sunday low ma.s.ses, which first emanated in systematic form from the Paulists of New York, is now fairly common, and of great service to those who cannot attend the princ.i.p.al ma.s.s on Sundays. But the curtailing of the chief sermon may easily be overdone. People will never venture to complain of the shortness of a sermon, but in truth one of eight or ten minutes does not satisfy them, nor allow time to develop the matter properly. It may be admitted, however, that shortness is a fault on the right side, and people would not now tolerate the length of sermon that used to be imposed on them. As a general rule, it would be well to be under twenty minutes rather than over, unless the occasion be an important one, with a special preacher, who may allow himself longer.

This applies to the chief sermons only; that at the evening service on a weekday, or at Holy Family or Confraternity meetings or the like would naturally be shorter; eight or ten minutes might in many cases be enough. The length of time that we can hold their attention will of course vary somewhat from day to day. One is able to tell at once when the listeners are getting weary. But even when we are conscious that this is so, there may be more good done than we are aware of. Frequently such has afterwards come to our knowledge; in numerous other cases it may have occurred without our knowing it.

Moreover, the good done by a sermon depends on what has been said in the body of the discourse. A good beginning or a good ending may round it off as a literary composition; but they will not appreciably affect the value of the sermon from the point of view of gaining souls. The same applies to the methodical development of the subject throughout. It is useful to aim at it, but if we fail to attain it, or go astray from the scheme we had made out, no great harm is done. What is important is that whatever we say should come from our heart, and that we should be so united to G.o.d as to fulfil our Lord's words, "It is not you that speak, but the spirit of your Father that speaketh in you." [8] This is the way to reach the hearts of our congregation, and to make our sermon in truth part of our pastoral work.

[1] St. Matt. x. 19.

[2] Acts iv. 20.

[3] That is, an ordinary parish sermon. In the case of a sermon on some special occasion this remark must be modified. Such sermons partake of the nature of a p.r.o.nouncement, and it is important that the language should be carefully weighed, and no point of importance omitted. They usually find their way into print, and are therefore addressed to a larger and different audience besides that in the church, and must be treated on a different footing.

[4] _Eternal Priesthood_, p. 187.

[5] _Ibid_., p. 179.

[6] Perhaps a remark may be here made respecting the eventuality which from time to time occurs to every preacher. All those who have been in the pulpit are familiar with the sudden feeling of blank coming over the mind, and the momentary complete forgetfulness of the scheme of the sermon. The great thing on such an occasion is not to stop. Once one stops to think, ideas go further away, the silence and expectancy of the congregation become oppressive, and the pause seems interminable: it is a question whether we shall ever recover ourselves at all. Whatever happens, one must not stop. One can repeat what one has just said in slightly different words, or give forth any religious sentiment, or the like: this gives time for thought and conditions favourable for thinking, and ordinarily one's ideas will return in plenty of time. And only those who have themselves had experience in preaching are likely to detect what is happening. One can occasionally notice even the most experienced preachers losing their thread in this way, and it is worth noting as an antidote to discouragement.

[7] A similar remark applies to the notices, and the Epistle and Gospel, which are sometimes read with quite painful carelessness. This is a point which many laymen feel very much.

[8] St. Matt. x. 20.

CONFERENCE X

THE RECREATIONS OF A PRIEST

IN the rules of every religious order are to be found special provisions with respect to recreation. These are both positive and negative. On the one hand there is usually a daily recreation which all take in common; and besides this, there are other times on feast days or other occasions when the ordinary rule of silence is relaxed and recreation by conversation is possible. On the other hand there are the negative rules, that a subject must not seek recreation outside his monastery, and must not go out for social intercourse with his neighbours without the leave of his superior, for which he must adduce a good reason.

The prominence attached to such regulations shows the important place which the subject holds in the life of the Order or Congregation. With the secular clergy this is no less so; and as is so often the case in comparing the two states, we find that the secular priest has in one sense a harder task, for he has no limitations of rule to guide him and no superior at hand to counsel him. He has to depend on his own strength of will and his own judgment.

But at the beginning of his priestly career, he has even greater difficulty, for it comes at a time when he has just thrown off the restrictions of seminary life, and also when he is reaching the fulness of his manhood. The world which has been kept from him to a great extent up to then now seems to open out and smile before him. It used to be a frequent question to seminarists, "How soon do you hope to be out?" Now he has come out. He is at once made much of by his new parishioners, who shower upon him invitations to lunch, dinner, supper, or other social gatherings. He needs no small self-control to avoid being carried off his legs at the outset, and being drawn into a daily life such as he never looked forward to when picturing to himself the priesthood.

His personal freedom also tends to increase the difficulty of his state. He has no wife or family to think of, he is alone, and is for the first time in the enjoyment of outward liberty, for his actual priestly duties can in the majority of cases be postponed or adjusted or even omitted to facilitate his recreation. It is very easy for his boy's outlook on life, which he should have put away before entering philosophy, to persist in considerable measure not only during his seminary course, but even after he has begun his career as a priest.

Such an att.i.tude is simply to take anything pleasurable or attractive which comes in his way, provided it is not sinful, and to enjoy it.

The state of the newly ordained priest in this respect is vividly depicted by Cardinal Manning:--[1]

"To a priest who enters for the first time upon the sacerdotal life the first danger is the loss of the supports on which he has so long been resting in the seminary. As in the launching of a ship, when the stays are knocked away, it goes down into the water, thenceforward to depend on its own stability; so a priest going out from the seminary into the field of his work has thenceforward to depend under G.o.d upon his own stedfastness of will. The order, method and division of time and of work; the sound of the bell from early morning through the day till the last toll at night; the example and mutual influence and friendship of companions in the same sacred life; and still more the nature, counsel and wise charity of superiors--all these things sustain the watchfulness and perseverance of ecclesiastical students until the day when invested with the priesthood, they go out from the old familiar walls and the door is closed behind them. They are in the wide world, secular as the Apostles were--that is, in the world for the world's sake, not of it, but at war with it; of all men the least secular, unless they become worldly, and the salt lose its savour."

A little later he continues:--

"A life of unlimited liberty is encompa.s.sed with manifold temptations.

A priest coming out of a seminary needs fellowship, and he often seeks it in society. He does not as yet know the character of those about him, or the reputation of the homes to which he is invited. Before he is aware he is often entangled in relations he would not have chosen and in invitations which, if he had the courage, he would refuse.

People are very hospitable and pity a priest's loneliness and like to have him at their tables. Sometimes the best of people are least circ.u.mspect and most kindly importunate in their invitations. How shall a young and inexperienced mind hold out against these facilities and allurements to relaxation, unpunctuality, self-indulgence and dissipation? The whole of a priest's life may be determined by his first outset. He has been in it too short a time either to gain or to buy experience."

It is not meant to be inferred that all social invitations should be refused and all intercourse with one's neighbour avoided. Such would be both impossible and undesirable. Nor, indeed, can it be allowed that such invitations are by any means always accepted from motives of recreation at all. Such is of course often the case; but often it is not. In many instances the priest may be fulfilling a duty of charity, or finding a means of spreading his pastoral work, and the recreation may be a secondary consideration, or may even be absent altogether.

Indeed, as a priest gets into years he will find more and more that many of his duties will bring all that is necessary for him in the way of recreation without his seeking it by any special act; and this even though he has to face much which is dull or unattractive or monotonous to him. The late Canon Oakeley, in his lectures at St. Thomas's Seminary so far back as the year 1870, lays stress on this point:--[2]

"A priest," he writes, "especially in some of the less populous missions, will soon find that social intercourse with his parishioners is quite as often a duty of charity as a means of personal recreation.

He must either refuse invitations altogether, or partic.i.p.ate in some festivities which will tax his good nature and exercise his self- denial quite as much as many of his severer duties. He may have to sit out a dull dinner-party, with uncongenial companions, on a hot day in summer. He may have to carve a round of beef for thirty hungry children at a Christmas party. He may have to adapt himself to the tastes and manners of the poorer members of his flock at some rural entertainment where his presence will tend to promote innocent mirth and to check dangerous excesses. On these and similar occasions he will find it necessary to put a restraint on his natural inclinations, in order to confer on those for whose happiness he is responsible that especial gratification which good Catholics of every cla.s.s derive from the sympathy and society of their priest."

Yet, apart from duties of charity, _some_ recreative society can lawfully and advisably be sought in the houses of the laity; but it should be strictly under control and subject to narrow limits. Above all things, a priest must not be a slave to it, so as to be driven by human respect often to accept invitations which his reason may tell him to be inordinate. A priest should not be a pleasure-seeker; and if he is not ready to deprive himself of much society which has an attractive appearance, for the sake of his work and for the recollection of his life, it is an unfailing sign of the loss of the priestly spirit. But precisely what limits to lay down for himself, cannot be stated in general terms, for it depends not only on a priest's own personality and temperament, but also on the circ.u.mstances in which he is placed. Canon Oakeley, however, adds one restriction which should certainly be adhered to, for we live in an ill-natured world, and our best friends are ready to be captious in their fault-finding:--

"The priest in society," he writes, "must never forget that he is a priest. Even if he forgets it, others will not. The ambiguous jest, the anecdote of questionable propriety, the loose and unguarded manner, with other such indications of the unpriestly character, will be remembered and perhaps quoted against him when the evening is over, and when its warping influences have given way to calmer thoughts and cooler judgments. The same persons who in the spirit of hospitable good nature have placed in his way the inducements to those excesses which at least weaken morality, if they do not occasion scandal, will be among the first to criticise the indiscretions to which they have helped to give rise. The demeanour of a priest in society should always be marked by humility, modesty, courtesy and prudence. He should be swift to hear and slow to dogmatise. He should avoid arguments except when necessary for the vindication of truth; and when thus necessary, he should maintain his side with meekness and in the spirit of charity."

There is one kind of social intercourse that should be an unmixed good, and often is so--the meeting with our fellow clergy. It is difficult to get them together for merely social gatherings; but any part of their work which brings them across their fellow priests is to both parties a source of strength as well as recreation. One of the great advantages of the monthly Theological Conference is that it brings groups of clergy together and is often made the occasion of a dinner or other social gathering. In like manner, not the least of the benefits which the Clergy Fund confers on its members is the bringing together of all the clergy of the South of England once a year to spend an evening in each other's society.

Even gatherings of the clergy, however, are not without their abuses.

The sight of a party of priests playing at cards hour after hour, till late at night, with its usual accompaniments, is happily more rare than it once was; but it is hardly obsolete even yet. Of course there is nothing in itself wrong in a game of cards, or in playing for money, provided the stakes are low; but it is well known as leading to much abuse. The excitement is of an unhealthy kind, and whether one is winning or losing, it is difficult to break off when a suitable hour arrives. Indeed, the whole question of card-playing needs treating with caution; both because it so often leads to what is undesirable, and because the recreation it affords is at best out of proportion to the time consumed. After a long session one ends less fresh than one began. A game of whist, or to some extent bridge, in which considerable skill is required, rests on a somewhat different footing: but even of that we should be wise to exercise a careful control.

From the social side of a priest's life, one naturally turns to that which has most influence on him when he is alone and which will include the chief part of his solitary recreation--his reading. To say that much of the success or failure of his priestly life will depend on the proper direction of his reading is merely to say what is obvious. Leaving out of account his directly spiritual exercises, he will undoubtedly have a large amount of time on his hands which may be most usefully employed in reading, and which otherwise will be simply wasted. A certain proportion of this may be solid work, such as theological or other study, necessitating close application. A mathematician may utilise his powers by studying problems or other matter, which stimulates and improves his mind. But there must be a large amount of time left when the mind is too tired for serious exertion, and this can be profitably devoted to reading of a lighter nature.

The first idea that occurs to one is novels. In past times a stricter view obtained about novel reading than seems to be the case to-day.

There is no doubt that a purely sensational novel is a powerful instrument for the loss of time, and it engenders an unhealthy craving for excitement of an undesirable type. A novel which is chiefly read for the excitement of its plot is beyond all doubt the priest's enemy, and a greater and stronger enemy than many realise. Such novels exist to-day in large numbers, and are sold at low prices. Perhaps for that reason they are not spoken of with much respect, and being of a generally low order, are less likely to ensnare us than those of a generation or two ago. This of course does not apply to cla.s.sical novels, such as Scott, d.i.c.kens, Thackeray, etc., nor to many modern novels by standard authors. But there are many to which it does apply.

Even the best novels are permeated with worldly ideals, and the mainspring of the story always turns upon love affairs, which even to a Christian in the world should not be the exclusive motive of life.

Nevertheless, if such books are read with care and discrimination, much recreative as well as educational thought can be obtained from them without any serious instilling of wrong principles.

The general subject of novels, however, is too long and complex to discuss here. We can perhaps get a little more practical on that of newspapers. To a priest a certain amount of newspaper reading is not only desirable, but necessary to keep him in touch with the world in which he lives and works. To know what is going on politically, the forces at work in Parliament, the agitations through the country, the relations of capital to labour, the lives and deaths of distinguished men, is essential to the conditions of modern life. Would that newspaper reading stopped there! Alas, many of the principles are unconsciously imbibed and are detrimental to the priestly spirit. This is no new evil. So far back as about the year 1836, Dr. Newsham of Ushaw wrote to Dr. Wiseman, as he then was, Rector of the English College at Rome, deploring the newspaper as the source of much of the want of ecclesiastical spirit among the clergy of his day:--[3]

"I will say to you frankly that there is a very great want of a spirit of piety, faith and religion in our clergy. It is useless to investigate the cause of this. I will say briefly that it has probably in good measure arisen from the great majority of the missionaries being young men, from the little control that has been exercised by the Bishops for many years over their young priests on the mission, and probably above all from the spirit of the times which is incessantly infused into the mind of a young man by our abominable newspapers. In fact, a greater pest, a more efficient weapon of the devil does not exist in the world than the English newspapers. Their pernicious effect on the minds of our young ecclesiastics has been observed and lamented by many others as well as myself."

At the present day the evil is of course emphasised by the great profusion of cheap newspapers, and as a rule the cheaper the paper, the lower the style and setting. And a further evil has arisen of reading those parts of them which give a momentary excitement. The little paragraphs are a potent time-waster. Even during the war, the evening papers contain much that is not really of any permanent importance about it, but out of war-time we became familiar with any number of small t.i.t-bits which may beguile the time of a business man returning home from his work, but which are unworthy of the attention of a serious-minded priest. Yet the paper became so full of them that even important news, such as the proceedings of Parliament, became relegated to a back page, or even got omitted altogether.

If we want to see a priest at his worst, we cannot think of a better opportunity than after breakfast on a winter's morning, if we can find him, as we sometimes can, spending an hour or two of the most valuable time of the day, when he is best fitted for work, in sitting before the fire reading the newspaper and smoking pipe or cigarette.

This perhaps suggests a few words about smoking itself, which can be reckoned among a priest's recreations; and if properly controlled, a very good recreation it may be. The solace of a pipe towards the end of a day, when nature calls for a rest and an opportunity for quiet thought, may be of great a.s.sistance to a priest in recuperating after a day's work. And a smoke after meals is good and healthy for mind and body. But, alas! many people do not limit themselves to moderate smoking, and the habit often leads to sad waste of time. There are indeed some who can work better with a pipe in their mouths: but these are the exception. The ordinary rule is that smoking is only compatible with light occupation. Hence a man who is always craving for a smoke is always craving for a few idle moments. How many small intervals in the day are there which many a priest fills up with a cigarette, with or without a little light reading or newspaper snippets. One does not easily realise how much time can be thrown away in this manner. Cardinal Manning used to have always at hand what he called a "five-minutes book," and he used to tell of the large amount of reading which he thus got through in his short unoccupied intervals.

But the evil of the frequent cigarette is more far-reaching than that.

The craving which calls for a few minutes of self-indulgence of this kind is surely an opportunity for a little self-control and mortification: if this is allowed to slip, by degrees one becomes a slave to smoking. And the evils of heavy smoking are many and great.

One is the general demoralising effect on oneself. Another is the unpleasant effect it has on others. A heavy smoker is a selfish man: the fact that he inconveniences his neighbour does not deter him.

After all, non-smokers form more than half of the congregation, for practically all the women and children are such, besides a not inconsiderable proportion of the men. To non-smokers, the smell of stale smoke is always unpleasant, while not infrequently it engenders unwillingness to go into close contact, as for example in the Confessional. Then again the stained fingers which mark the heavy smoker seem an unworthy instrument for saying ma.s.s, and for touching the Blessed Sacrament. Many a person has been kept away from a priest by his reeking of tobacco. Truly a priest's whole career may be marred by the habit.