How to Get Honest Feedback on Your Homilies

A priest may preach thousands of homilies over the course of his priesthood. A deacon, hundreds. Yet many homilists could count on one hand the number of times someone has given them honest, specific feedback on their preaching. What they hear instead, at the church door after Mass, is some version of "Nice homily, Father" — warm, sincere, and almost entirely useless for growth.

Without real feedback, habits quietly calcify. The five-minute introduction that loses people, the phrase repeated every week, the homily that consistently runs long, the ending that never quite lands — none of it gets corrected, because no one ever mentions it. Pope Francis called the homily "the touchstone for judging a pastor's closeness and ability to communicate to his people" (Evangelii Gaudium 135). If that is true, it is worth finding out how you are actually doing. This article offers a practical approach to getting honest feedback on your homilies — and receiving it well.

Why "Nice Homily, Father" Tells You Nothing

The comments at the door are shaped by circumstance more than by the homily. People are being polite. They are on their way somewhere. Many of them feel it would be presumptuous to critique a priest. And the parishioners who found the homily confusing, too long, or unhelpful are usually not the ones who stop to talk — they slip out the side door.

None of this is anyone's fault. But it means the feedback most homilists receive by default is heavily filtered toward the positive. Scripture warns about exactly this: "The way of fools is right in their own eyes, but those who listen to advice are the wise" (Proverbs 12:15). If you want an accurate picture of your preaching, you have to go looking for it.

Start by Listening to Yourself

The cheapest, most honest feedback available is a recording of your own voice. Record a homily on your phone — audio is enough — and listen to it later in the week, when you have some distance from it.

Most homilists find this uncomfortable at first. Almost everyone does. But within a few recordings, patterns become obvious that you could never notice from the ambo:

• Filler words — "um," "you know," "so," "right?" — that you did not realize you used.
• Pace. Are you rushing the important parts, or dragging through the introduction?
• The first thirty seconds. Would you keep listening if you were in the pews? (Our guide on how to open a homily is a good reference point.)
• Clarity of the message. Can you state the one thing the homily was about after listening to it once?
• The ending. Does it land, or does it circle? (See our piece on finishing a homily well.)

Listen to one homily a month. You do not need to do it every week to see real improvement.

Build a Small Feedback Circle

The most useful feedback comes from a small group of parishioners who have agreed to listen carefully and speak honestly. Four to six people is enough.

Choose them deliberately for variety. A young parent. An older parishioner who has heard decades of homilies. A teenager or young adult. Someone relatively new to the faith, perhaps a recent convert from OCIA. Someone whose first language is not English, if your parish is bilingual. And — this is important — at least one person you suspect will be candid, even blunt.

Explain what you are asking and why. Give them explicit permission to be honest, and promise that honesty will be welcomed. Keep the conversations confidential. Meet once a month or once a quarter, over coffee, for about an hour. Before each meeting, ask them to listen to a particular homily with a few specific questions in mind.

Ask Better Questions

"Did you like the homily?" produces polite answers. Specific questions produce useful ones. These five are a good place to start:

1. What was the one message? Ask each person to state it in a single sentence. Then compare their answers to the central message you intended. If their answers vary widely, or miss your point, the homily was not as clear as you thought. This is the single most revealing question you can ask.
2. Where were you most engaged, and where did your attention drift? Almost every homily has a moment where people lean in and a moment where they drift. Knowing both is invaluable.
3. What did the homily ask you to do this week? If they cannot answer, the homily may have taught without inviting.
4. Was anything confusing? A word, a reference, a leap in logic. What is obvious to someone with seminary training is often opaque to everyone else.
5. Did anything feel aimed at someone rather than offered to everyone? Homilists sometimes preach, without meaning to, at a particular group or situation. Listeners notice.

Write down what you hear. Look for patterns across several people and several meetings rather than reacting to any single comment.

Invite a Brother Priest or Deacon

Parishioners can tell you how a homily was received. A fellow homilist can tell you how it was built. The two perspectives complement each other.

Consider trading recordings with a brother priest or deacon you trust, once a month or so, and offering each other the kind of feedback a good editor gives: what worked, what did not, and one suggestion. Some priests' fraternities and support groups already meet regularly; adding occasional homily review to that time can be a gift to everyone involved. Deacons in a diaconal community can do the same. Newly ordained homilists, in particular, benefit enormously from an experienced voice — see our article on your first year at the ambo.

Receive Criticism Without Defending

The hardest part of feedback is hearing it. When someone tells you the ending of last week's homily lost them, the instinct is to explain why they misunderstood, or why you made the choice you did. Resist it.

Listen. Take notes. Ask a clarifying question if you need to. Say thank you. Then think about it later, privately. The moment you begin defending a choice, the people giving you feedback learn that honesty is not actually welcome, and the feedback will quietly dry up.

It is normal for criticism to sting, especially about something as personal as preaching. You pray over these homilies. They come from somewhere deep. A comment that a homily was confusing can feel like a comment about you. It is not. It is information, offered by people who want your preaching to reach them. Receive it as a gift, even when it does not feel like one.

Work on One Thing at a Time

A feedback circle may give you a dozen suggestions. Trying to fix them all at once rarely works. Choose one habit to work on for a season — perhaps shortening your openings, or cutting filler words, or ending more cleanly — and focus on it for a month or two. Record yourself, check your progress, and then move to the next thing.

Improvement in preaching is cumulative. A homilist who gets meaningfully better at one thing every few months will, over a few years, be a very different homilist.

What Feedback Is Not For

A word of caution. Feedback is for clarity and connection. It is not for popularity.

Some parishioners will want homilies that are shorter, others longer. Some will want more humor, others less. Some will want you to avoid difficult teachings altogether. You cannot and should not try to please everyone. The Gospel sometimes rightly unsettles, and a homilist who preaches only what is comfortable has stopped preaching the Gospel. The question to ask of any feedback is not "Will this make me better liked?" but "Will this help the Word reach these people more clearly?" Our article on preaching hard truths with clarity and charity addresses this balance directly.

A Final Word

"Iron is sharpened by iron; one person sharpens another" (Proverbs 27:17). Seeking feedback on your preaching is not an admission of inadequacy. It is an act of humility, and ultimately an act of love for the people you serve. They deserve the best you can give them, and none of us can see our own preaching clearly without help.

Start small. Record one homily. Ask one trusted person the first question: "What was the one message?" Their answer will teach you more than a year of "Nice homily, Father."