'The Lord be with you. And also with you.' (Not, 'and with your spirit'). The rendering of 'Et cum spiritu tuo' in a sense which included the whole person raised eyebrows back then when it first came out. Had a fifth column of Anglo-Saxon, anti-metaphysician, logical positivists infiltrated ICEL some wondered!

Since then I have laboured under a delusion. I thought that liturgical English was unique in this particularly 'dynamic equivalent' translation. Another reason for my continuing delusion was that the indigenous South African languages also translate the Latin literally as 'And also with your spirit'.

I recently discovered I was quite mistaken. At a gathering of some fellow African Jesuits I asked each of them how the translation was made in the various languages that they spoke (and, as is common in Africa, some spoke several).

It turned out that English is by no means alone, and that 'And also with you' is precisely how it is rendered in Swahili, Lingala, Shona, Acholi, Lango, Alur, Jonam and Chewa. Those with some knowledge of African languages will note that some of these, particularly Swahili and Lingala, are very widely spoken in areas of Africa with a large Catholic presence.

Upon enquiring whether similar changes to those being proposed for liturgical English were being mooted for these African tongues, my confreres said they had not heard of any.

Chris Chatteris, S.J.

"The preaching of the good news is like one beggar telling another where to find food." This is an arresting aphoristic definition of unknown origin likely to give pause to an aspiring Bossuet. Such a definition well illustrates Mary Catherine Hilkert's fundamental point that "Every preacher has a theology even if that theology remains implicit" (Naming Grace: Preaching and the Sacramental Imagination, p. 48).

Hilkert continues in the above vein: "Underlying convictions about where God's word is to be heard and by whom and how it is meant to be proclaimed, will affect very practical decisions about homily preparation...Reflection on how one goes about creating and proclaiming a homily can disclose one's beliefs about the locus of revelation and the goal of preaching."

The point is an important, down to earth one--practical pastoral approaches are not without theological foundations and hence it is not a matter of "mere academic" importance to identify and clarify what these are. Or, as a colleague, following Jungman puts it, what we should be aware of is what the preacher is doing up there.

This is especially so if we happen to be the preacher "up there." If we habitually give a lesson in systematic theology, this is revelatory of a certain theological stance on preaching. The same is true for moralizing, pious exhortation and social analysis; the list goes on. The action occurring in the pulpit implies an underlying theology of which it is clearly good to be aware, if only to offer some variety.

Fred Craddock insists on the bonds between preaching and theology, remarking vividly that "separation of preaching from theology is a violation, (my italics) leaving not one but two orphans' (As One Without Authority, p. 52).

Chris Chatteris, S.J.

'It is hard for the congregation to take the homily more seriously than the preacher takes it.' (Anon)

'Speakers exhibit visual and verbal signs that prompt their listeners to make judgments about their right to communicate'. (R Kennedy [quoting King, Power and Communication])

'If we applied ourselves as assiduously to our craft as (the conductor) does to his, our people might be at a loss to account for the change that would come over our preaching, but how they would welcome it!' (Robert McCracken)

'And so it was, my dear brethren, that Jesus Christ rose from the dead, as it were, under his own steam!' (A Scottish pastor who had been so long in the one parish, and whose annual cycle of homilies was so well known to the parishioners that they would all join in with him in the above punchline of his Easter Sunday homily!)

'Either talk sense or come down!' (A British monarch to a preacher)

Chris Chatteris, S.J.

Peter Sellick's beautiful article on this topic refers us approvingly to Archbishop Rowan Williams' critique of the anthropocentric Renaissance view of the artist as "a creative genius who imposes his will on his artistic material." Williams proposes a return to the earlier, more self-effacing vision of the artist as a humble "midwife ... discovering what is already there but unseen."

The point of Williams' criticism is that in the modern context the artist is excessively centre stage, posing as a divine dominator over the artistic material and sometimes arrogantly feels that a work without shock value is of no value at all. Sellick's examples of the exhibition by Duchamp of a urinal and Andres Serrano's Piss Christ make the point tellingly. No doubt the Renaissance artists would have recoiled in horror at the thought that their anthropocentrism could lead to such artistic fraudulence but of course that is what happens when an idea is taken to extremes.

If, therefore, we propose the analogy of the preacher as artist, then we too probably have to beware of this self-serving artistic Zeitgeist. We would do well also to revisit the idea of the artist as a more retiring, backroom figure, someone who is a midwife of truth, of that which is already there, rather than as the look-at-me, centre-stage performer who purports, through the imposition of a creative, sovereign will, to fashion his or her 'own' truth. One wonders sometimes whether the preaching of some of the tele-evangelism churches, which seems to be so personality-based, is not partly a manifestation of this form of egotism.

A reflection on this view of the artist might help us preachers foster a deeper humility before the Word of God and avoid some of the classic temptations of our trade such as twisting the scripture to our own purposes (often because of our need to moralize), explaining how difficult it was to prepare this particular homily or playing to the galleries with stories that miss the scripture's point. Sellick is also moralizing of course but the good news in his article is that the art of preaching, like art generally, should be delightful with the delight engendered by the discovery and expression of the 'truthful insight'.

Chris Chatteris, S.J.

Morris West in his memoirs reminds us of the words he puts into the mouth of Giordano Bruno in his play, The Heretic:

Ever since the Greeks, we have been drunk with language! We have made a cage of words And shoved our God inside, as boys confine A cricket or a locust, to make him sing A private song! And look what great gob-stopping Words we use for God's simplicity, Hypostasis and homoousion! We burn men for these words - a baboon chatter Of human ignorance! - we burn men! (102)

A powerful condemnation of the misuse of words, done with words and an illustration that it is an inescapable and abiding fact is that we live in and by language. We work, create, do, within language whose words give meaning to our life and world and make the very way we live possible. There are very few human activities we could conduct without words, from putting up a house to educating a child to engaging in commerce to organizing a political party to shaping a society.

Many of these areas of discourse involve persuasion and the moving of hearers through eloquence. Despite the much quoted activist credo of 'deeds, not words', in fact many of the deeds implicitly being encouraged here either involve words or actually are words. Making peace involves many words, as does a vast spectrum of other worthy human actions - thinking, inventing, intervening, leading, recognising, organising, entertaining, loving, praying. In an age of democratic consultation, the tedious meeting is an indispensable step to achieving anything, and meetings involve many, many words. Like all things human these activities which are intimately involved with words can be manipulated, hijacked and perverted to the service of evil. But it fails to follow that we can opt out of language and make do with 'dumb' acts. It suffices to imagine the chaos that would occur if the human race were to be suddenly struck speechless. The Babylon myth tells a simple but deep truth - without the communication of language human activity becomes impossible, the transgressing tower cannot be built, but neither can anything else.

Chris Chatteris

According to Buttrick in his magisterial work Homiletic, Moves and Structures, to fail to create images in preaching, or any form of speaking, is to risk making no real impact at all. 'Ideas without depiction are apt to be abstract and oddly enough, unconvincing', he says. On the other hand it is the idea concretely expressed which effectively, 'settles in consciousness.'

For C. H. Dodd the concrete and memorable quality of the parable is the beginning of an important inner process in the hearer. His definition of a parable illustrates this. It is, 'A metaphor or simile drawn from nature or common life, arresting the hearer by its vividness or strangeness, and leaving the mind in sufficient doubt about its precise application to tease it into active thought.'

Craddock quotes Bonhoeffer in support of this view that what is effective in preaching, as illustrated by Jesus of Nazareth's contributions, is the concrete: 'The church must be able to say the Word of God, the Word of authority, here and now, in the most concrete way possible, from knowledge of the situation.'

But Craddock goes even further and insists that images are not just an optional extra but theologically essential to Christian preaching: 'Images are not, in fact, to be regarded as illustrative but rather as essential to the form and inseparable from the content of the entire sermon'.

In this view preaching involves the creation of concrete images, not just because the Word spoke in parables, but because the Word was made flesh.

Chris Chatteris, S.J.

If preaching the Gospel is a vocation, it seems odd that little attention is paid to its potential in candidates for the priesthood. "Can he do the studies?" is the first question that tends to come to mind, meaning the whole panoply of academic philosophy and theology that will engage him for six or seven years.

"Can he pass the psychological tests?" is another big question, meaning does he have the personal maturity to start the process of formation and the potential for growth within that process? Here we are getting a little warmer with regard to preaching, because personal maturity has always been required in one who is to be given the power of the word, whether religious or secular.

A question I sometimes ask my students when discussing a particular topic for a homily is: "Are you old enough to say this?" I then illustrate by suggesting that a freshly ordained young man might risk looking foolish preaching to grandmothers on how to fulfill their grandmaternal roles.

When candidates come for those come-and-see weekends I suggest we make them do some basic communication--proclaiming the word, standing up and telling us a story, reflecting on an important topic, even some thoughts on the scriptures. Apart from whether they have the basic temperament and talent for preaching, we might also discover more about their personalities, since public speaking is so revealing of character.

A liturgist I know, whenever he listens to a new preacher, asks himself the question: "Is this person for real?" Getting our candidates for the priesthood to stand up and speak to a group might help us answer that question in terms of both fundamental character and communication ability.

Chris Chatteris, S.J.

Sixteenth Sunday of the Year C
Luke 10: 38-42

In 1999 I met an elderly Dominican at the Sainte Baume, the holy cave in Provence, the beautiful Cezanne region in the south of France, where tradition has it that Mary Magdalene, having labored for the evangelization of the region, retired into solitude and prayer. The old man argued vehemently with my skeptical French Jesuit companion for the authenticity of the tradition.

The demythologizers suggest that in the persecution-driven dispersal of the 1st century Church, members of a community associated with Mary Magdalene arrived in Provence and laid the foundations of faith. Our OP would have none of it: she was there, a true disciple of the Lord, sent out just like the others. Certainly it is a holy place, hallowed by prayer, pilgrimage and faith, but was she actually there?

I would assume our Dominican friend would have agreed with Pope Gregory the Great (and disagreed with the Eastern churches who have separate feasts for the two Marys) that Mary Magdalene and Mary of Bethany were one and the same person. Luke's depiction of Mary of Bethany sitting at the Lord's feet and being commended for choosing the better part would fit with his view.

For while the bustling Martha's serene and immobile sister has been enlisted in the service of the cloistered tradition ever since there have been cloisters, the one who sits at the feet of the Lord and 'listened to him speaking' is surely in fact more the itinerant disciple than the proto-monastic religious.

The disciple is the one who, once having imbibed the Lord's teaching and experienced his resurrection, is sent out onto the road to share it with others, moving from still and focused listening, to a dynamic pouring forth of Good News perhaps even more energetic than Martha's dramatic culinary exertions.

Chris Chatteris, S.J.

The late Bishop Untener warns homilists not to tell stories just for laughs. I suppose we've all done it. We hear a good joke and feel the need to pass it on to others. The Sunday congregation fits that bill nicely. Even if the story somehow dovetails with the readings, it's probably too colourful or too hilarious. Thus the congregation's attention remains anchored right there and is unable to move on to more serious ground.

The point is well made – dogs should wag tails, not tails dogs; the story should serve the homily, not the reverse. Just throwing a story, any story, into the homiletic mix at any point, will not turn a preacher into a Bossuet. Au contraire!

The 'Two Thirds Rule' is an application of the right-use-of-story principle. How, you might wonder, do fractions get into homiletics? In his alliteratively entitled book, Handy Hints for Hesitant Homilists, the late Paul Edwards S.J., having attributed the rule to his confrere Tony Horan S.J., renders it thus:

"Two-thirds the way through any sermon, speech etc, with the midpoint clearly past and the ending now on the horizon, the concentration of both speaker and audience tends to slacken. The speaker, to compensate for this, must deliberately gather himself, and by some phrase, touch of humour or unexpected gambit, rally the listeners and lead them on with revived interest into the final third."

The rule reverses a popular misconception among homilists, mentioned by Bishop Untener, that the point in the homily at which the congregation needs waking up is the beginning. Not so, says Untener – that is precisely the moment when they are listening, hoping (sometimes against hope) for something of value.

Where the hearers do need an attention-booster is actually on the home run. It's not just how we tell stories but when.

Chris Chatteris, S.J.

Well, is it 'for many' or 'for all'? Even here on the Southern tip of Africa, where the number of Catholic mother tongue English speakers is minuscule, it's also a hot topic. Our local Catholic paper has been running a muscular correspondence between prelates, liturgists and pew-sitters. Here too a core issue is the alleged Latinisation of English.

Might Italians also react badly if some Anglo-Saxons tried to anglicise their lovely Romance tongue? Or even Celts: consider the Scottish comedian, Billy Connolly's tale about how he's walking happily down a street in his native Glasgow, feeling quite at home, when he's approached by men in saffron robes with shaven heads chanting 'Hare Krishna'. 'And they try to tell me that I've got a problem!' expostulates Connolly.

Vox Clara seems to suggest unclear voices. No translation is perfect, but is it implied that a transcendental expression of Catholic truth exists, and that it happens to be in Latin?

Apart from the philosophical and theological objections to this, it's rather a patronising way to deal with a language which has been a vessel and conduit for Christianity for quite some time now, and which today delivers vastly more theological discourse, and liturgical prayer than Latin. How many people think or pray in Latin these days?

I imagine we've been here before. As koine Greek gave way to vulgar Latin, for the sake of the wider mission of the Church, Latin is now giving way to English and Spanish for the same reason. I wonder if some Greek speakers wanted to Hellenise the Latin as the Latinists now feel the need to Latinise English. 'My dear fellow; how can you possibly adequately translate the word logos into anything except, well, logos?!'

Can we ask the Latinisers to take English a little more seriously? Perhaps. During the apartheid era I visited a 'coloured' Catholic diocese where the mother tongue is Afrikaans, 'the language of the oppressor', a sentiment I then shared. When I attended the Eucharist in Afrikaans, my negative perception collapsed dramatically. Here was clear Catholic faith and piety, intense, prayerful, and faithful, 'sanctifying' a despised language.

What further evidence beyond the Incarnation and Pentecost do we need to be convinced that in Christ all languages are sacred and therefore to be trusted?

Chris Chatteris, S.J.