All Things Augustine: Augustine the Preacher
Maureen McKew

“I once heard a preacher who sorely tempted me to say I would go to church no more. . . . He had lived in vain. He had no one word intimating that he had laughed or wept, was married or in love, had been commended, or cheated, or chagrined. If he had ever lived or acted, we were none the wiser for it. The capital secret of his profession, namely, to convert life into truth, he had not learned. Not one fact in all his experience, had he yet imported into his doctrine. . . . Not a line did he draw out of real history.

The true preacher can always be known by this, that he deals out to the people his life, life passed through the fire of thought.”

- Ralph Waldo Emerson, July 15, 1838

The pastor had worked for days on his Sunday homily. As  he climbed into his pulpit, he was certain this was the one that would hold his congregation spellbound. He launched into it, drawing, as required, on the readings of the day. He measured  in quotes from Aristotle, Shakespeare, and John Henry Newman, then added a soupçon of  wisdom from Pope John Paul II for seasoning. Oh, this was a winner.

As King Lear tripped off his tongue, a woman sat up suddenly in her pew. She frowned, shook her head, frowned again and nodded. “She’s listening,” the pastor said to himself joyfully. “She’s getting this.”

When the Mass ended, the pastor stationed himself at the church door and waited eagerly for the woman to greet him. Suddenly, she was standing before him and she was speaking. “Monsignor,” she intoned. “Are you aware that there’s a huge leak in the north transept? The plaster is bulging out.”

How many times has an earnest preacher devoted the proverbial blood, sweat and tears to his Sunday homily, only to deliver it to a church filled with dull-eyed, listless people and howling babies. How many times have Sunday Mass goers sat through a preacher’s mystery tour of theology, philosophy and the news of the day, only to walk out muttering, “I thought he’d never shut his mouth!”

There are few subjects more likely to stir contention among Catholics than the Sunday homily. Why does it seem that the Protestants down the street have better sermons? Why does Father talk so long, then race through the rest of the Mass?  No matter how he starts, he always finishes by telling us to go to confession. Is he on the same planet with us?

Today’s complaints may not be so elegantly phrased as Emerson’s lament, but the underlying issue is  the same. Is the Catholic preacher connecting with his audience.

Of course, the preacher, too, may have cause to complain about his audience, perhaps musing to himself: Look at them. They’d rather be home reading the papers, or out on the golf course, or still snoozing under the covers. They seem so passive. How could even a brilliant orator rouse them!

Is there blame enough for both speaker and listener? How can anything be done for the Sunday sermon to be all that it should be? Whatever that may be, it is first of all the task of the preacher.

Many have tried and few succeed completely in satisfying the critical Sunday morning audience. From June 25^th through the 28th, the Augustinians of the Province of St. Thomas of Villanova  will launch a workshop on preaching, drawing upon the experience of the master himself: St. Augustine of Hippo (see sidebar).. They could not have chosen a better model.

A preacher in a league of his own

Long before the term “great communicator” was bestowed on Presidents Ronald Reagan and Bill Clinton, Augustine should have been given the title.  Here was a man who knew how to seize a congregation’s attention and keep it, how to teach the untutored without talking down, how to be a spellbinder without putting everyone into a trance.

Augustine lived and preached in an oral culture. When he presided at Mass in his basilica in Hippo Regius, his community of worshipers was quite different from the silent soldiers, rising, kneeling and sitting on cue during today’s liturgies, according to the Rev. Thomas F. Martin, O.S.A., assistant professor of theology and religious studies, and a renowned specialist in Augustine’s rhetoric.

“Picture a standing congregation with a dynamism that’s completely different from a seated group. It was the opposite of today’s practice, “ Father Martin explained. “In Augustine’s basilica, the foundation of which is still standing, the apse was out back and there he would sit on his cathedra [chair] and preach. It has been suggested, although, that when the church was crowded, he moved from the cathedra to a spot closer to the congregation, perhaps even standing at the altar.

“He was close to the people; he could see and hear them. He could tell from their groans, their sighs, their cries, and even their laughter whether or not they were with them.”

The lectionary (the selected readings of each day) was not as fully developed as today’s three-year cycle of prescribed readings and Augustine had more freedom to choose from scripture. However the practice of including a reading from the Old Testament, another from the New Testament, a psalm and a gospel piece was already established, and the bishop of Hippo referred to them in his sermons.

As a veteran educator, Augustine understood that any person’s mind could wander a bit or be distracted, especially in a large crowd, so he frequently opened his talk by saying: “You have heard the gospel” or “we have read the blessed apostle Paul” and then quickly summarized the reading.

Dialogues with the crowd

Princeton University historian, Dr. Peter Brown, whose landmark 1967 biography, Augustine of Hippo, has just been republished in a new edition (Augustine of Hippo: A Biography, Revised Edition with a New Epilogue, University of California Press, 2000) has described the sermons of Augustine as dialogues with the crowd. First of all, the bishop made himself one with his congregation. “Condiscipuli sumus,” he said. “We are all fellow students here.” This and similar statements  formed a bond between priest and people. He spoke without written notes but never without preparation.

Father Martin said that Augustine was especially fond of using the diatribe method of rhetoric, in which he would call an imaginary person up beside him and interview him as a way of discoursing on his theme, be it marital fidelity, ethics or maybe even heresy.

Imagine Augustine talking to an imaginary person who had committed adultery or defrauded his employer, right there before everyone. Or refuting a person whose beliefs were well known, perhaps popular, but not orthodox.

That is what he did with an imaginary fellow he named Felix, a name which meant happy – although Felix was shown to be infelix (unhappy), either because of sin or because of wrong belief.  Hence Augustine – and his attentive audience – would have had a field day probing the reasons Felix was not living up to his name. Of course, the particular lesson would have been suggested by one of the day’s readings.

Augustine’s homilies were recorded by secretaries, thereby preserving his wisdom for readers of the next 1, 600 or so years.  However, few members of his flock in Hippo Regius would have been able to obtain and read them. Writing materials were scarce and the people themselves were not educated. They were dock workers, farmers and small merchants, according to Father Martin, who recently has been rereading his way through the surviving collection of 396 sermons.

Father Martin claimed that the discourses Augustine delivered at his church  in Hippo are fairly easy to spot. “You can generally tell when Augustine’s in Hippo. The sermons have a sort of down-home, ‘I’m with my people’ flavor, whereas the sermons he delivered in Carthage reflected the more diverse, educated audience, which frequently included officials of imperial Rome.”

Was every sermon a winner? No, even Augustine had an occasional off day, according to Father Martin. “You can tell from reading some of the sermons that he was distracted or maybe didn’t feel well. His prose is kind of choppy.”

However, most of the time Augustine was a great preacher and when he was at the top of his form, he could probably hold an audience captive with his words and charisma.

His previous career as a professional rhetorician and teacher gave Augustine an uncanny ability to size up his audience’s ability to comprehend and retain his message.  He knew that in his world, information retrieval was accomplished in the head and heart, so he frequently  capsulated the essence of his homily in a catchy Latin phrase the people could take home and remember. 

However, the genius of Augustine’s preaching was due as much to his own humility as to his rhetorical talent.. He saw himself as a fellow traveler with his congregation. He understood and conveyed to his people the principle that when he preached, two teachers were at work. Augustine, the outer teacher, put the Word of God into people’s ears. Only Jesus Christ, the inner teacher, could put the Word into people’s hearts. He  expounded on this in his dialogue De Magistro, which he produced in about 389, shortly after his baptism and return to Africa from Italy. Interestingly, the only other interlocutor was his beloved son, Adeodatus, who died around the time the dialogue was written

One can certainly understand Augustine’s popularity when one reads phrases such as “what parents would be so foolish as to send [their child] to school to learn what the teacher thinks?” He knew how to keep the focus on the topic rather than on the teacher/preacher.

Preaching and teaching other preachers

Augustine probably preached several times a week and  sometimes even twice a day: at mass and, in the evening, at vespers.  There is no way to know how many sermons he delivered beyond the 396 located so far. More may yet turn up. Just a few years ago, some hitherto unknown sermons were discovered in a fifteenth-century homiliary in a library in Mainz, Germany.

As bishop of Hippo Regius, Augustine also  was responsible for the preaching of his brother priests. Evidently, the quality of their sermons was fairly low because Augustine felt compelled to raise their standards. De Doctrina Christiana, which dates to around the turn of the fifth century, was his effort to upgrade preaching and establish scripture as the source for sermons.

A preacher for our time

One has only to glance through the documents of the Second Vatican Council (1962-65) to realize that the thought and practices of St. Augustine dominate the reforms that emerged from that extraordinary gathering.

With the promulgation of the Constitution on the Liturgy in 1965, preaching took on a new meaning,  rooted in the example of Augustine.

The Liturgy of the Word was given a new importance and, within it, the sermon was a given a new name: homily. This was no mere semantic exercise. Homilies are understood to mean discourses that would bring the lessons of Scripture to head and heart, to everyday Christian life. The discourses Augustine delivered  in Hippo Regius can be described as homilies, according to Father Martin, whereas the more elaborate discourses he delivered in Carthage are often more like our formal sermons.

Post-Vatican II preachers have made attempts to connect with their congregations. However, they deal with obstacles Augustine never faced. Most  churches standing today were built in Romanesque, Gothic and Renaissance styles of architecture. Other, designed in the so-called “post-Vatican II” architecture, bear an unsettling resemblance to airplane hangers. It has proved difficult and sometimes impossible for a priest standing in an elevated pulpit to connect emotionally or intellectually with after row after row of seated, silent worshipers.

Another issue is the sheer size of today’s churches, especially those built to house the American suburban mega-parishes. In addition, worshipers who have to duel in their cars for spaces in the church parking lot before Mass, are rarely in a receptive mood for the either Word of God or the words of the homilist.

At the same time, the declining number of priests to serve the growing parishes, particularly in the United States, has put an immense burden on those who do serve.  Fewer and fewer parishes have more than one permanent priest and the practice of turning over administration of parishes to lay and religious associates has been slow to catch on, perhaps for financial reasons. As a result, the priest often does not have sufficient time to prepare his homily.

Is there a solution? 

Some Catholics think it’s time to toss out the reforms of Vatican II and go back to the so-called good old days. The problem with that is that the good old days were not all that good, as anyone who had to sit through a hell, fire and damnation sermon might recall.

Augustine himself offered a better alternative if only people would take notice. He knew his people  He tailored the length and content of his homilies to them. He never talked down to them, physically or intellectually. Most important of all, his prayer and reflection allowed to him to understand both their interests and their needs, and he knew that both were served by speaking clearly and beautifully about the Word of God.  His people proved him right.

Was his congregation in a more receptive mood than those of today? Probably not. But they did come from close by, they knew one another, and they knew how to appreciate the greatness of Augustine’s talents.

 As Father Martin pointed out, Augustine’s flock walked as a community to the Eucharist. There was a camaraderie and easy familiarity among them as they entered their church and  stood shoulder to shoulder. They and their bishop were a true community of believers.

Perhaps it is time for seminaries, parishes and dioceses to take another look, guided by The Constitution of the Liturgy of Vatican II, at their expectations and hopes for homilies.  Greater attention to preaching, by both priests and people, need not be threatening; it could not hurt to seek to enliven that part of the Christian experience, making better speakers and better listeners of all of us.  Parish adult education seminars on the sermons of St. Augustine might prove enlightening for all.

If Augustine and his flock could connect with one another and with the Word, surely the educated clergy and congregations of the 21^st century could do so as well. Spending quality time with the experts of previous times, especially Augustine, will any case would be worth the time and effort.                       

The Augustinian Press  is now on line. Discover more about  Augustine and other famous Augustinians a www.augustinian.org. Or call 1-610- 527-3330.

For works by Augustine, including a new translation of his sermons by the Rev. Edmund Hill, O.P. (Donna, this guy’s not Villanova faculty and I know nothing of him) contact New City Press by e-mail at      info@newcitypress.com or call: 1-800-462-5980.