Thursday\u2019s Gospel was drawn from Luke 7, in which Jesus speaks of John the Baptist, the key line from which is the following: \u201cAmong those born of women, no one is greater than John; yet the least in the Kingdom of God is greater than he.\u201d<\/p>\n
In all, the Gospel reading that morning ran to 171 words, featuring the typically crisp language for which the public utterances of Christ are justifiably renowned.<\/p>\n
After the Gospel, Dennison paused to deliver his homily. There were the usual signs of people settling in, getting comfortable, perhaps trying to sneak in a quick check of messages or a peek at the bulletin, that usually precede an experience people expect will stretch on for a least a few minutes.<\/p>\n
Here\u2019s Dennison\u2019s entire homily, word-for-word, which was immediately burned into my memory.<\/p>\n
\u201cTo be entirely clear, Jesus said that among those born of women, John was the greatest. To be equally clear, we should listen to him and respond.<\/strong>\u201d<\/p>\nFrankly, the brevity was so stunning my colleagues and I did a double-take, unable to process at first that Dennison was actually finished and was moving to the altar to begin the liturgy of the Eucharist.<\/p>\n
The next day, the reading was from John 5 about how John the Baptist brought a lamp to light the way to Christ, a robust 85 words in total. Once again Dennison summarized the reading, and then added this: \u201cJohn brought light, but there are those who still refuse to see.<\/strong>\u201d Twelve words, start to finish.<\/p>\nAfter I heard him do it so succinctly again, I said: \u201cHe\u2019s my new candidate for the greatest homilist I\u2019ve ever heard!\u201d
\nTo some extent, I was being facetious – breakfast and a day in Key West awaited, and two 10-second homilies in a row were an unexpected bonus. Plus, this was daily Mass in front of a small congregation.<\/p>\n
On the other hand, I wasn\u2019t entirely kidding. If you look at Dennison\u2019s utterances, the heart of the matter in each case was all there. As one of my colleagues put it, it was the \u201ckerygma\u201d itself, entirely unadorned.<\/p>\n
As anyone who\u2019s sat through a random sample of Catholic homilies recently could confirm, that\u2019s often not the typical experience. Too often, it\u2019s hard to detect the evangelical forest for the verbal trees.<\/p>\n
On Friday, I went up to compliment Dennison on his economy of expression. He told me it\u2019s deliberate, something he\u2019s been doing at daily Mass for years, ever since he arrived in Key West.<\/p>\n
\u201cAnybody can talk for five minutes and maybe have a vague idea of their opening point,\u201d he said. \u201cTo do it all in one sentence, you really have to think about it.\u201d<\/p><\/blockquote>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Jeg holder n\u00e5 p\u00e5 \u00e5 sette opp tekstene til katolske messer ved hjelp av Bibelselskapets nye oversettelse, Bibel 2011, og torsdag sist uke s\u00e5 evangeliet slik ut: \u2629 Lesning fra det hellige Evangelium etter Lukas (7,24-30) Da sendebudene fra Johannes var g\u00e5tt, begynte Jesus \u00e5 tale til folket om Johannes: \u00abHva gikk dere ut i […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"site-sidebar-layout":"default","site-content-layout":"","ast-site-content-layout":"default","site-content-style":"default","site-sidebar-style":"default","ast-global-header-display":"","ast-banner-title-visibility":"","ast-main-header-display":"","ast-hfb-above-header-display":"","ast-hfb-below-header-display":"","ast-hfb-mobile-header-display":"","site-post-title":"","ast-breadcrumbs-content":"","ast-featured-img":"","footer-sml-layout":"","ast-disable-related-posts":"","theme-transparent-header-meta":"","adv-header-id-meta":"","stick-header-meta":"","header-above-stick-meta":"","header-main-stick-meta":"","header-below-stick-meta":"","astra-migrate-meta-layouts":"default","ast-page-background-enabled":"default","ast-page-background-meta":{"desktop":{"background-color":"var(--ast-global-color-5)","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""},"tablet":{"background-color":"","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""},"mobile":{"background-color":"","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""}},"ast-content-background-meta":{"desktop":{"background-color":"var(--ast-global-color-4)","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""},"tablet":{"background-color":"var(--ast-global-color-4)","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""},"mobile":{"background-color":"var(--ast-global-color-4)","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""}},"footnotes":""},"categories":[3,11],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-11771","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-katolsk","category-liturgi"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/aomoi.net\/blogg\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11771","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/aomoi.net\/blogg\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/aomoi.net\/blogg\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/aomoi.net\/blogg\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/aomoi.net\/blogg\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=11771"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/aomoi.net\/blogg\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11771\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":11776,"href":"https:\/\/aomoi.net\/blogg\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11771\/revisions\/11776"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/aomoi.net\/blogg\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=11771"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/aomoi.net\/blogg\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=11771"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/aomoi.net\/blogg\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=11771"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}