Preaching the Sunday Homily and the Current Pastoral Context of the Church in the United States

Thirty years ago, the former Committee on Priestly Life and Ministry issued the document Fulfilled in Your Hearing: The Homily in the Sunday Assembly.11 This text has proven very helpful in the life and mission of the Church, especially in the formation of preachers. However, new circumstances within the Church at this historical moment call for us to build on this previous document and to reflect anew on the ministry of preaching.

In the years since Fulfilled in Your Hearing was published, the Church, under the leadership of Blessed John Paul II and Pope Benedict XVI, has emphasized the need to engage in a "New Evangelization," a call for a renewal of the Church first articulated by Pope Paul VI in his apostolic exhortation Evangelii Nuntiandi.12 In order for the Church to fulfill her mission "to the nations," she must continually renew herself in her own members. In our day many Catholics have drifted away from active participation in the Church and are in need themselves of hearing again the Gospel of Jesus Christ and of recommitting themselves to discipleship.

At its heart, the New Evangelization is the re-proposing of the encounter with the Risen Lord, his Gospel, and his Church to those who no longer find the Church's message engaging. Pope Benedict XVI has presented the New Evangelization as the focus, mission, and ministry of the Church going into the future: "Recovering the centrality of the divine word in the Christian life leads us to appreciate anew the deepest meaning of the forceful appeal of Pope John Paul II: to pursue the missio ad gentes and vigorously to embark upon the new evangelization, especially in those nations where the Gospel has been forgotten or meets with indifference as a result of widespread secularism."13 In order to awaken this hunger and thirst for the word of God in our time, we need to renew our preaching with lively faith, firm conviction, and joyful witness.

In announcing 2012-13 as a "Year of Faith," Pope Benedict XVI declared: "What the world is in particular need of today is the credible witness of

11 USCCB, Fulfilled in Your Hearing: The Homily in the Sunday Assembly (Washington DC: USCCB, 1982).12 Pope Paul VI, Evangelii Nuntiandi (On Evangelization in the Modern World); Pope John Paul II, Redemptoris Missio (On the Permanent Validity of the Church's Missionary Mandate), no. 3.13 Verbum Domini, no. 122.

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