Hello, I am George Martin, and I again welcome you to selected homilies of Monsignor Joseph Bernard McAllister, this being disc number nine of 12. I cannot listen to Monsignor McAllister without picturing him in his teaching role of some forty years. While I do not know what his lesson plans looked like back then, as far as his preaching was concerned, I never saw him read from a prepared text. He never had anything written down for his weekday masses, and he only had sketchy notes for his Sunday homilies, to which, by the way, he never seemed to refer. I truly believe he learned early in his teaching career that the art of teaching was limited to the likely capacity of the hearer to adequately absorb that day, and no more.
In Monsignor's case, you cannot separate the teacher from the preacher, other than the fact that the student had an obligation to learn and would be tested, whereas a person in the pew would be dismissive of that which was being provided. So, he must have thought, keep it simple. Almost without exception, his homily had a single idea wrapped in a logical package. I picture him getting approval from Saint Thomas Aquinas when everything he was preparing to deliver. If you are driving while listening to this CD, what I propose here could be dangerous to yourself and others, but if you have a chance to listen to this CD while taking notes, you will discover the simplicity of these homilies.
The structure of each homily is as predictable as one, two, three. One, a catchy introduction of the issue at hand. Two, the formulation of the problem to be solved, and three, the obligation of the hearer to act on the argument being made. It is as simple as that. For example, in the third sermon here, one, where is the truth to be found?
Two, our obligation to search for the truth, and three, when we find the truth, to act on it. Like any good salesman, Monsignor couldn't care less whether you remembered one or two, but in his robust and convincing manner, he would be deeply disappointed if you forgot three, the goal or object of the whole exercise. And he liked nothing better than to have someone discuss or even challenge what he had said that day. Monsignor, like Christ, was here on earth with a message, and that message may be hard to accept for some, but nothing was going to stop him from delivering the message. Having carefully listened to this CD, see if you don't end up with only two or three words for each of the three categories mentioned.
Did his introduction catch your attention? Did he sufficiently analyze a problem or issue which he wished to resolve? And finally, did he inspire you to act on the solution he proposed? Hopefully he did. And now, we continue with the selected homilies among senior Joseph Bernard McAllister.