Welcome back to the Word on Fire show. This is episode three. And today I'm talking with Bishop Robert Barron about the five qualities of good preaching. I'm Brandon Vat, the content director at Word on Fire. Bishop Barron, thanks so much for joining us as always.

Brandon, you're the best. Thanks for having me on.

Now, some people are going to hear this topping and think, oh, that's only for priests or seminarians, five qualities of good preaching. But I want to emphasize that this is really for everybody. Any Catholic in the pew can be an encourager of good preaching. They can help their priests to preach better. But also we preach to other people. We preach to our children, those of us who are parents. We preach to ourselves. Many church leaders have encouraged preaching the gospel to yourself.

So recently you were given an award from the Aquinas Institute of Theology. They honored you with the great preacher award. And they invited you to come and not only accept the award, but to give a talk. And you gave these five qualities of good preaching. Now a little bit of context. A recent survey from the diocese of Springfield asked former Catholics. They interviewed about several hundred former Catholics and said, what were the main reasons why you left the church?

About seven of ten said that their spiritual needs were not being met. And many of the anecdotal responses complained about the homilies. They said, you know, I never heard good preaching or good homilies in the Catholic church. But then I went to an evangelical church. And I was really filled. They were powerful. They got deep into the Bible. I really felt spiritually fed. So many people leave the church over bad preaching. And I think not a few Catholics would wish that the preaching was stronger and stronger.

And they're parishes. So for all those reasons, that's what we're going to be talking about today. The five qualities of good preaching. So let's spend some time on each of them. First quality is that good preaching is mystical. What does that mean?

What does that mean? Is there's a distinction between speaking about Jesus and allowing Jesus so to possess you that he speaks through you. The second one is preaching. The first one could be lecturing. It could be teaching theology. It could be correct. It could be even inspiring. But it's not preaching. To preach is again, to allow Jesus so to seize you.

That your words become his, that he speaks through you. Jesus is not one teacher among many, but the word made flesh. He's the incarnation of the very word by which God makes the universe. And therefore his word is a transformative word.

Real preaching happens when that word has seized the preacher that he becomes a vehicle of that transformation. So my point there to the crowd in St. Louis, which include a lot of priests and seminarians, was prayer is not a side light to the preacher.

Oh, yeah, it's nice to have a healthy prayer life. No, no, you can't preach unless you're a person of prayer. What you're doing isn't preaching unless you are steadily and deeply immersed in Christ. If you can say with Paul, it's no longer I who speak, but Christ who speaks in me. Now you're preaching. So that's what I mean by the mystical side of it. See, there's a, there's a danger to a hyper intellectualism.

Now I've, as you know, been advocating intellectual life for years, but there's a danger of a hyper intellectualism where I'm just talking about the Bible or talking about Jesus. I think you can tell quickly if the preacher is someone who knows Jesus intimately and personally and not just in an academic way. Do you know what I'm saying? And it's that intimacy that gives rise to real preaching.

You know, for this quality, the person I have in my mind as embodying the mystical quality of preaching is one of our great heroes archbishop Fulton Sheen, you know, he was famous for advocating this holy hour, this one hour he would spend with the Blessed Sacrament. And in all of his writings and interviews, he would say, that's the reason why I've been a successful preacher. Can you talk a little bit about the role of a holy hour and the mystical quality of preaching?

Yeah, I'm glad you mentioned Fulton Sheen, you're right. He's one of my great heroes. And he has interesting about the holy hour thing. You know, my generation. So I went to the seminary in the late 70s and the 80s. No one read or listen to Fulton Sheen. Fulton Sheen was this, oh yeah, our parents. Yeah, that guy on TV, our parents listened to in the 50s. No one read him. No one listened to him. But his word went like a seed deep underground. And it came sprouting up in the next generation. So as I began teaching at Mondaline,

to my great surprise, I hear students talking about Fulton J. Sheen. I said, really Fulton Sheen, you guys are listening to, oh yeah. And we're reading his books. And you're right. His central teaching and all his retreats and all of the fun with priests was a holy hour.

Now to be perfectly blunt, when I was in the seminary, let's say early 1980s, if you had said to one of us, have you done your holy hour today, we wouldn't know what you were talking about. It just wasn't language that we used.

And the post council generation was encouraged, really kind of discouraged from praying in front of the bus of sacrament. That was seen as static and non liturgical.

And it was the mass that mattered, not the reserve sacrament. So all of that was kind of muted in the years I was coming of age. But seeing God's providence, a lot of it was planted deep underground.

And now it's come sprouting up in the next generation. And now I mean, every, all the guys at Mondaline, I think most of the guys now at Camarillo where I am, the seminary in LA, would regularly do a holy hour. I do a holy hour now. And in a way, I never did many years ago.

That's the influence of sheen. And I think maybe will be his longest term impact. And you're dead right that he would have said, that's where preaching comes from.

Another of course, great hero of mine, Thomas Aquinas, his associate who spoke at his canonization proceedings, acknowledged that Thomas, of course, was a genius. But he said, he received far more wisdom from his hours of prayer than his hours of study.

And see, that's not just whistle and dixie. And that's just a pious thought. That's a very, very important insight. Thomas Aquinas, you know, one of the great geniuses in the West. But I think that's absolutely right to say, God, his wisdom, more from prayer than he did from study.

That's the mystical side of preaching.

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