"But do speak more at length … you are wrong in being so brief … you only tantalize your audience … you deprive them of a real pleasure." Expostulations like these will pour in upon you; but don't listen to them: be inflexible, for those who urge them are enemies without knowing it.
Be more rigid than ever in observing the rule which you have prescribed for yourself. Then your sermon will be talked of—it will be a phenomenon— every body will come to see a sermon of seven minutes duration. The people will come; the rich will follow. Faith will bring the one, and curiosity will attract the other, and thus the Divine word will have freer course and be glorified. …
If the men do not come, appeal to the women, and ask them to help you. If you want to attract the women, announce that you intend preaching specially for the men. You will find this method infallible; the men will follow.
Moreover, go yourself and find them out: visit the workshops, factories, and wharves. Be particularly attentive to those who are shabbily dressed and ill-favored. On taking your departure, tell them with a smile that French politeness—in which you feel quite sure they are not deficient—demands that visits received should be returned: that you will dispense with their coming to you personally, but will expect to see them at the seven minutes sermon. The result will not disappoint you.
When you have many male hearers, you should reserve a space for them. The women will complain that thereby they are placed further away; but you must appease them with a compliment. Tell them that you know their charity, and are persuaded that they would not certainly wish to hinder the word of God from being heard by those who need it most.
When you have well cultivated your congregation, when a strong current of sympathy and charity has set in from them to you and from you to them, when a number of conversions shall have been made, then you may think of sending some of them to high Mass and to Vespers. Don't fail to felicitate such:—"You have come hither to hear me. So far well, and I am greatly rejoiced at it. Still you may do something better: you may attend high Mass," adding your reasons, and then conclude somewhat in this style:— "Now, I hope that those who are rightly disposed will attend high Mass. I only want the badly disposed, poor downright sinners, at my sermons." You will be obeyed by some, and you will thereby do much toward repopularizing religion; and when those who are not converted fall sick they will say:—"Send for the man who preaches the seven minutes sermon; I don't want any other." Thus God will be blessed and glorified. …
Here, then, you have a very simple and cheap means of restoring the people to religion. It may be put into practice everywhere: in great cities, in small towns, and even in hamlets. The subject is one for serious reflection. Even in our most religiously disposed towns, hardly a third of the inhabitants habitually hear the word of God. Elsewhere, matters are still worse; and yet all are sheep of the same Divine pastor, all have a soul to save. Moreover, according to all theologians, every parish priest of a cure is required, sub gravi, to preach at low Mass, whenever the faithful generally do not attend high Mass. Hence, by pursuing the course above indicated, we may not only save others but shall also exonerate ourselves.