UNDERSTANDING MY HOMILIES

UNDERSTANDING MY HOMILIES

My homilies are prepared with great care and delivered in “Calcutta English” that even foreign visitors understand and appreciate. Catholics of Calcutta and India should understand even more easily and appreciate the ideas, the language and the elocution. An average educated adult who has had English medium education and is paying attention to the explanation of the Word of God (which is what the homily is about) will surely gain from my preaching.  The Catholic institutions have run excellent schools in the English medium for more than a century, and have been appreciated and extolled for their standards of academic education and character formation.  If those who come for my Eucharistic celebrations claim that they cannot understand what I am saying in my homilies they have either not garnered the values of the education that was imparted or they are too sluggish to pay full attention to what I am conveying.  Either way there is no excuse. I am not expected to lower my standards of the language, scriptural interpretation, elocution and, very importantly, the moral demands of the Word of God in our everyday context. Parishioners are welcome to contact me immediately after the Eucharistic celebration, and some people do, in order to question me on some issue I raised in the homily, seek enlightenment and ask for prayers. I do so readily. Some even ask me to email the text, which I also do.  If members of the congregation have difficulties about language and ideas they are very welcome to an interface at any time; but it is it ungracious to talk and spread dissatisfaction in my absence. I am at the service of the Word in the context of the people immediately present for the Eucharist at which I preside. Usually the congregation is a mixed one of different ages, levels of apperception and moral complexities. One will understand that it is asking too much to address every level and calibre of humanity equally. As I explained above, I address myself to the average educated adult. I am commissioned to give of my best in terms of prayer, study and sacred eloquence, and from those who are willing prayer and understanding.

-         - Mervyn Carapiet