Over at the biblical Synod, they’re getting an earful about — of all things — preaching.

From CNS:

After the current church year dedicated to St. Paul, the Catholic Church should dedicate a year to the art of preaching, Bishop Gerald F. Kicanas of Tucson, Ariz., told the world Synod of Bishops on the Bible.

“Unfortunately, preaching in our day can lose its savor, become formulaic and uninspired, leaving the hearer empty,” Bishop Kicanas, vice president of the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops, told synod members meeting to discuss “The Word of God in the Life and Mission of the Church.”

Bishop Kicanas and Cardinal Francis E. George of Chicago, USCCB president, were among the 23 synod members to address the assembly Oct. 7.

Each member submitted a summary of his talk, which was released to the press, and a synod briefing officer provided further details to reporters.

Pointing to an account in Chapter 20 of the Acts of the Apostles, Bishop Kicanas told the synod members that even St. Paul “on occasion was known to talk on and on.”

“We are told that Paul was preaching in Troas on the first day of the week and one of his listeners — the young lad Eutychus — was sitting on the windowsill listening. He became drowsier and drowsier and finally fell asleep,” the bishop said.

“He fell from the third-story window to his death,” he said. “God, through Paul, brought the young boy back to life.”

The bishop said that while people still tend to nod off during a boring homily no one usually dies.

But the liturgy is supposed to build people up, he said. Preaching is supposed to comfort, heal, bring hope, inspire, challenge, teach and confront.

“Through grace, it changes lives,” he said.

Bishop Kicanas said preaching in the Catholic Church must improve, and he asked what would happen if the church dedicated a year to improve preaching.

Bishops and priests, working together, should study what makes a homily effective in “this distracted world,” he said. They should ask laypeople what matters to them and what they would suggest to improve homilies.

With a global, concerted effort to improve preaching, “the new springtime for Christianity, about which the Holy Father speaks, could burst forth and bloom throughout our church,” Bishop Kicanas said.

It’s unfortunate that he doesn’t seem to have mentioned that other branch of Holy Orders that preaches: deacons.