✣ Highlights from the week online
How to make the most of a bad sermon To the delight of his readers, Fr Tim Finigan has returned to more regular blogging after a hiatus. At The Hermeneutic of Continuity, he posted some advice on “How to listen to the sermon tomorrow”. You may think, Fr Finigan wrote, that the homily is dull, or “that the priest did not prepare well, or that he read out an essay, that he was too serious, or too light-hearted, that he ignored current events, or talked about news items, that he was too theatrical, or lacked rhetorical skill”. But a sermon is actually a sacramental – that is, we can use it to “increase in grace”. “What we need to do is to ask the Holy Spirit what He wishes to give us here and now through this sacramental.” And if the sermon is heretical? Well, you should still open yourself to the grace of God. “He will strengthen you to hold fast to the faith, encourage the faith in your family and among your friends, fight against error – and find a good parish where the faith is taught properly.” Evangelisation should not be drone warfare At ncregister.com, Jason Craig compared evangelising online to drone warfare. Like a drone pilot, the techno-evangeliser is able to reach far, communicating with millions of people. “You are able to coolly lob truth bombs into the interwebs and pray that your well-reasoned comments, perfectly tuned videos and dynamic presentations will lead people away from death to life,” he wrote. But, both for the pilot and the evangeliser, “there is significantly less danger, and that might be dangerous”. Christianity had always been an “agonisingly human thing”, he argued, starting with the Incarnation, and is “spread largely through the encounter with people who have had an encounter with Christ”. Real encounters with Christ, he said, involve the “weight of real crosses and the intimate experiences of real rejection” – the kind not usually found online. What monasteries can learn from hipsters At americamagazine.org, David J Michael asked whether religious orders could learn something from “hipster” culture. Hipsters, whose influence is growing, value what is rare, unusual, and rooted in tradition. “Hipsters are drawn to craft beer, obscure cheeses, organic farms, taxidermy and homemade preserves. They favour hand-dipped candles, old-fashioned stationery, Indian headdresses and the lamentable industrial-chic decor and exposed bricks that mark so many new restaurants and bars.” All this has become mainstream, which can mean it becomes commercialised. But hipster values “now mirror central monastic ideals – simplicity, authenticity, community, self-sufficiency, contemplation”. These things could well be attractive to the modern eye, he wrote.
