’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.