On Being Gentle and Firm By Robert P. Maloney
About once a month here in Rome, I go to St. Peterís and enter when the
doors open at 7 a.m. It is awesome to gaze at the huge, empty basilica as
the morning light filters through the windows. Lately I have found myself
immediately drawn to the altar of Pope John XXIII, where an older Italian
priest celebrates Mass each day for a small group of people. I stay to
listen, since I find his homilies fascinating. As a preacher, he does almost
everything wrong and almost everything right.In my more critical, professor-like moments, I censure him for speaking too long (a malady to which many of us priests succumb). Nor are his homilies especially unified. He pours out one thought after another, bouncing from place to place in the readings of the day or in the life of the saint whose feast we are celebrating. If he has further thoughts, and he usually does, he adds them as he leaves the altar after Mass, standing in the midst of the little congregation gathered around him.
So why do I listen so eagerly? Because so much is so right in what he says and does as a preacher. He reminds me of a comment that Thomas Merton once made about a priest in his monastery: “He’s the only one really worth listening to around here. The others speak about Christ, but this one really knows Christ.” You pick that up right away as you listen to this priest speaking to his tiny flock. He is filled with love and enthusiasm for the word of God in the person of Jesus and in the Scriptures.
He is also well prepared; it is clear that he has studied the readings of the day and has meditated on them in prayer. This week, as I sat among his listeners, he told us about an obscure ninth-century pope about whom I knew absolutely nothing. Yet he made him come alive, not just for me but, I sensed, for everyone in the little group of lay people who were there. Even the sleepy-looking altar boy, whose mother had surely just pried him out of bed, perked up as the homily went on.
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