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Book Review: Joy of Our Soul is manna in stale-sermon desert

By Diane Levero

When was the last time you heard a really good sermon? If you're like me, it has been a long, long time and I suspect I'm not alone.

Week after week at Mass, with rare exceptions, we hear bland, mushy "oatmeal" sermons, without salt, substance or flavor.

They're not even called "sermons" any more; they're "homilies." (The word "sermon" implies that you might hear something that could make you feel uncomfortable or guilty, or jolt you out of your pleasant moral or spiritual stupor.)

Call them what you will, for the 3 1/2 years that Fr. McLean Cummings preached at St. John the Evangelist Church in Severna Park, he brought his listeners the Divine fire of the Gospel that Jesus so longed to bring to earth.

Some. of his parishioners found his sermons so soul-stirring, they began tape-recording them-a happy move because, although Father Cummings wrote down his Sunday sermons, he delivered his pithy week­day sermons from a few notes.

In January, 2002, Father Cummings left St. John the Evangelist parish to serve the Church in St. Petersburg, Russia.

"He's the type of priest who would want to go where the greatest need was," says Miriam Lademan, one of those who had been taping his talks .

Says Miriam, "I felt bad that more people couldn't hear them."

She remedied that by collecting, organizing and editing them into a book, Making God the Joy of Our Soul, which was published in August, 2002.

The 328-page book contains 211 sermons, most of them short enough to be read in a few minutes. They are grouped by topic or by Church season: Advent, Christmas, Love of God and Neighbor, Faith, Humility and Charity, and so on.

Each is a small and beautiful jewel, brilliant in its insights, rich in wisdom and holiness, gleaned from the heart of a priest who lived the words he spoke.

"I never really appreciated before what a parish priest could do," says Miriam. "His Mass was so reverent and incredible!

"If you got to Mass early, he would be there praying; it was kind of like having the Cure d' Ars in your parish."

Unlike most priests today, he encouraged confession from the pulpit. As a result, says Miriam, his confession lines were very long.

"He would go out of his way to hear confessions. I know people whose lives were drastically changed by what he told them in the confessional."

Miriam had been among those praying on Saturdays across the street from the abortion mill on Ritchie Highway, adjacent to church property.

"He showed up and got us to go right in front of the clinic. He's very pro-life."

The book includes 16 sermons under the heading, "Sanctity of Life." Father Cummings does not pull punches. In one of them, referring to the nearby abortion mill, he asks, "How long must we worship in the shadow of a killing machine?"

In another, he says, "The lawmakers and the judges and the medical professionals who can calmly and dispassionately decree death have cold-blooded hearts.

"If the young women were told half of what is happening, they would refuse to abort. Many of our nation's leaders are, on the contrary, spiritually living-dead, moral zombies, hell-bent on their mission of defending and extending the culture of death."

In the sermon, "Demonic Influences," he paints this vivid picture: "Just as we believe that here in this church, there are angels gathered around the tabernacle, always adoring the Lord night and day, we have to have the same understanding that in an abortion clinic, where those terrible evils take place, there are devils gathered, exercising their influence on those who work there. Gathered, perhaps we can imagine, like vultures sitting up there on top."

That Father Cummings has steeped himself in the writings of the saints and the encyclicals of the popes is evident in his frequent and casual references to them. His sermons are learned and erudite without being stuffy or hard to understand.

And they have an "edge" to them-that hard edge or sharp demand for sacrifice, penance and perfection in holiness missing in the "Catholic-lite" homilies, but clearly demanded of us by Jesus. That edge that makes being a true Catholic an exciting and noble adventure in the war between good and evil of like Lord of the Rings for real.

In one sermon, Father Cummings, the youngest of eight, recalls his mother telling one of his brothers that he must strive to be a saint, and his brother's plaintive reply, "You mean I can't just be a regular guy?"

No, says Father, we can't just be "regular guys"; we must all try to be saints. Making God the Joy of Our Soul can guide us toward that goal.

For a copy of Making God the Joy of Our Soul, write to John or Miriam Lademan, 1677 Pleasant Plains Road, Annapolis, MD 21401, or phone 410-757-5682. Suggested donation is $10 per book Make checks payable to John Lademan.

Half of the proceeds go to support the work of restoring the Church in Russia, with the balance for printing, postage and shipping expenses.