Now we come to direct preparation of our sermon. Undoubtedly the only way at the beginning is to write it out, learn it and deliver it from memory. But this laborious process is only a means to an end. It will in the first instance help the priest through his initial shyness and diffidence in speaking of God and holy things in public; and it will lay the foundation for the methodical composition of a discourse. For he will soon learn the sequence of ideas which sound at first artificial, though eventually they become part of the instinct of the preacher—text, introduction, statement, development, explanation, illustration, peroration, etc. But it bears the same relation to preaching that the old autumn manœuvres did to war. His sermons in future will not be written out: in the present hard-worked state of our clergy, it would be impossible; and in any case, it would be ineffective. A sermon written and repeated by heart must sound unreal and dead. [3] As Cardinal Manning puts it, "The written word is what we thought when we wrote it; the spoken sermon is what we think at the moment of speaking. It is our present conviction of intellect and feeling of heart: it is therefore real, and felt to be real by those who hear it." [4]
It is not intended to discourage a careful preparation, so far as circumstances will permit; quite the contrary. But it will not be of the nature of writing a set discourse. It will be a far more simple preparation. Cardinal Manning instances the preaching of the Apostles. "We cannot," he says, "conceive these messengers of God labouring to compose their speech, or studying the rules and graces of literary style. The records of their preaching in the New Testament are artless and simple as the growths of nature in the forest, which reveal the power and beauty of God. Their words and writings are majestic in their elevation and depth and pathos and unadorned beauty, like the breadth and simplicity of the sea and sky. Their whole being was pervaded by the divine facts and truths, the eternal realities of which they spoke." [5]
Let us fix our ideas by a definite instance. In all St. Paul's career there was no one sermon which would have needed greater care than his sermon at Athens. He had to speak to a highly educated audience, of people without belief even in God, most of them eaten up with pride, listening to him with a supercilious curiosity; and he knew that for most of them his sermon would be the one opportunity of their lifetime. If any sermon of his would have needed previous thought and preparation, it would have been this one. Of course we have no authority for saying how much preparation he gave to it. We can well imagine his carefully thinking over what he was going to say, thinking of his initial outburst about the Unknown God, carefully considering his line of argument about the Resurrection of our Lord, his reference to the Greek poet with whom both he and they were familiar, and so forth. But equally we most assuredly cannot for a moment imagine him writing out and learning his discourse. Had he done so, it would have lost all its force and reality. Any gain in the artificial rhetoric, or the choice of words, or the like would have been far more than compensated for by the hollowness and want of fervour hic et nunc. Other instances might be adduced and the same reasoning applied to them: St. Peter's sermon on the day of Pentecost, St. Stephen's speech to his murderers, and many others. From internal evidence we can see that these were thought out and prepared beforehand; but we cannot even imagine their having been written out and committed to memory.
Our future preparation may perhaps be something of this kind. First we have to fix on our subject—not always the easiest part of our work. Let us suppose that on reading through the Sunday Gospel some aspect of it or some incident in it appeals to us from a particular point of view, and that point we decide to develop. Possibly something we have read in the past occurs to mind, and we get out a book—or perhaps several books—to suggest to us a few ideas. Then the first stage of our work is done.
The next process is to think. We have to make the ideas our own, and develop them according to the bent of our own minds. This cannot easily be done as we sit at our desks. Thoughts will not come to order. Developing a subject in one's mind is a gradual process, and takes time. It can well be done as we walk from place to place, or exercise any light employment. It is specially suitable to do it as we go about our pastoral work. The words we use in our visits to members of our flock are the reflection of our mind and will bear close resemblance to our words in the pulpit. If we find plenty to say, and are conscious of the consolation we give by saying it to the poor individually, why should it not be so likewise when we address them from the pulpit?
In order to complete our preparation, we must then sit at our desk and write out the substance of our thoughts and put them in methodical order. We should also look up the texts of Scripture on which we rely, and frequently the context will suggest further thoughts. All this will vary between man and man, and between day and day. Some will write long notes, others short. On some days thoughts come easily, on others only with difficulty. Some people may find it useful to write a fair copy when the matter has been rearranged, others will arrange their matter methodically at the outset, and so forth. When we have done this, we can leave the sermon to the time, presumably not far distant, when we are going to preach it.
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 pronounces 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.