Mothers' Day Sermon

Dear Friends and Family,

To all the good mothers I know: a very happy and blessed Mothers' Day! You will be in my prayers in a particular way as I offer the Holy Sacrifice this evening. Mothers are such wonderful blessings on the earth. I think we could never give thanks enough for the gift of mothers.

I recorded this morning's homily in case anyone has trouble falling asleep and needs something to listen to:  https://clyp.it/svkq5251 . I'm not sure it was a particularly good homily, and to boot the recording quality is not that great, but perhaps it will give those of you far away a tiny glimpse of the parish I'm in: Sunday announcements, French and English, baby noise in the background and all.

Since the audio is a bit long (though the second half is in French), I'll simply write in this blog simply on the topic of how a sermon is prepared. Have you ever wondered how a priest prepares his Sunday homilies? For myself Sunday homilies develop in a variety of ways. In general though each one begins with some prayer at the beginning of the week, essentially asking God the question: what would you like me to preach about this coming Sunday? In my case I like to also ask the Virgin Mary directly that question: what would you like me to preach about? I've found that She is quite helpful for this.

This week the result of those prayers was the thought that it could be good to center the homily around two different elements:

1. The similarities between the Virgin Mary with her "children" (the Apostles and disciples) gathered around Her in prayer, preparing to face a hostile world (which is what took place during these 9 days between the Ascension and Pentecost), and mothers today and their children, who are also preparing to face a hostile world.

2. (in French) the call to spiritual maternity for all those women who either don't have children or are unmarried.

After the initial idea then there is the whole process of fleshing it out--perhaps researching texts if they are involved: Scripture, saints' writings, etc.--and then developing an outline or writing it out. Sometimes something develops in this process which is different, and hopefully better, than what I first planned on. In this case I felt I should write the whole sermon out, especially since half of it would be in French. After praying some more on it during the week and reflecting on different aspects of the sermon, I began developing the outline Friday morning. That took perhaps 90 - 120 minutes. Then I spent most of the rest of the day writing it out. I was hoping to do it in less time but it took a lot longer than I thought. To be honest I was not very happy with it, and kept needing to come back to some sections, to delete others, etc. in the hopes of having it come across clearly, trying to choose language carefully to fit people's situations, rewriting a section if it didn't seem to convey what the Lord would want said, etc. And doing this in French of course took longer due to the language.

You might think: all of that work for a sermon that is nothing special? yep... and then yesterday I spent perhaps another hour reading it through it and making a few more adjustments. Then this morning in prayer I read through it a last time, and adapted a few items. So that's one way that a Sunday sermon develops, at least for me!

May the Lord grant special graces to all the good mothers I have known as a priest-and to all those mothers I have yet to meet.

In Corde Mariae,
Fr. Anthony Pillari