Homiletics Bloopers

Those of us in Theology II are currently enrolled in our first homiletics class. There is a class portion once a week and nine "labs" in which we preach our own homilies. The first couple of homilies were not our own. Our first homily was taken from the Liturgy of the Hours, our second from a contemporary preacher. It is safe to say that any blunders in our message were not our own but the original author. As of late we have told a story of a memorable homily that we have heard and this is where the fun begins. A couple of us (myself included) failed to remember that when you tell a story it is good to have an ending. This led to us standing awkwardly at the ambo until we ended it by stepping away from the ambo.

This week our assignment was to give an impromptu speech/homily. We pulled a piece of paper out of a hat with a situation and we had three minutes to prepare. Some had more difficult situations than others. A couple of our classmates were given situations involving the death of a person. One of our classmates was asked to talk about an 85 year-old man who died of lung cancer and most of his family is not Catholic or does not go to church at all and the priest who did the funeral is not available. It was not the theological content, but the fact that the homilist stated in similar words: "Some of you may think he died too young". As soon as he said it, he caught himself, but nonetheless it was a funny moment.

Both of these moments are very helpful in learning what not to do as we continue our formation as priests.