ADVICE TO SEMINARIANS
Don’t be businessmen or princes; don’t give long, boring homilies
VATICAN CITY — Pope Francis told seminarians not to become “orphan priests,” who are motherless without Mary; “businessman priests,” who are after money; or “prince priests,” who are aloof from the people.
He also warned them not to give “boring homilies,” saying their reflections should be brief, powerful and address the problems and concerns people are really going through.
In a private audience in the Vatican’s Paul VI hall with thousands of seminarians and priests from around the world who are studying in Rome, the pope spent 70 minutes answering the questions of eight pre-selected participants.
The pope told them that he already had seen the prepared questions, and urged them to feel free to change the questions and go off-script if they wanted. However, the men, who were from the United States, China, Lebanon, Cameroon, Mexico, Philippines and Poland, appeared to stay with the prepared questions.
In his off-the-cuff replies, the pope addressed questions about formation; difficulties living in a religious community; advice about being far from home and living in Rome; how to balance the many duties of being a priest or bishop; what a real leader must be; and what the new evangelization entails.
The pope peppered his serious and detailed advice with a number of humorous anecdotes and sarcasm, like when he warned the men to never forget they have a mother in Mary.
“But if you don’t want Our Lady as a mother, you will have her as a mother-in-law and that’s not good,” he said to laughter and applause.
When there’s trouble, children “always go to their mother. And we are children in our spiritual life,” the pope said.
“To forget a mother is a terrible thing,” he said, and when a priest forgets Mary or does not have a good relationship with her, “something is missing. He is an orphan priest.”
The pope later warned against becoming a “businessman priest” or a “prince priest” in response to a question from a Filipino student about the qualities needed to best lead the people of God.
Parishioners are usually very forgiving of a priest’s missteps, except when they are sins of greed and vanity — the “two hazards” that St. Augustine warned about that come with the priestly office.
One of the reasons why there are so many “boring homilies” is because priests aren’t “close” to their people, he said. The measure for seeing how close a priest is to his parishioners is his homily, he added.
Pope Francis lamented long homilies, telling the students he knows the 40-minute homily “isn’t something made up. It happens!”
Homilies also should not be “about abstract things,” he said.
While it expresses “the truth of faith,” a homily shouldn’t be a classroom lesson, a conference or an academic reflection, but be “something else,” that borders on the sacramental, and is “brief and powerful.”
He said “we are late” in picking up on this problem and that the church has a lot to do to ensure homilies are under 10 minutes and done well “so that people understand” the word of God.
The pope urged seminarians to not let their academic studies take over their spiritual growth, apostolic work and community life.
“Academic purism is not healthy,” he said, and it carries the risk of “slipping into ideologies,” which harms the priest and people’s conception of the church.
When asked about balancing all of the demands of being a priest or bishop, the pope said the secret is prayer and always making room for the sacraments and eucharistic adoration.
The ideal day is to go to bed tired “so you won’t have to take any (sleeping) pills,” he joked.
