Kiss and tell?

The Gospel of Matthew in the Bible describes Jesus' epic sermon on the mount from Chapters 5 to 7. However, I have always wondered why priests attempt to fit it all in during the 20 minutes that precede the Eucharistic prayer. When we were little it was easier to pass those twenty minutes. As children we would run down aisles, paying no heed to our mother who attempted more than once to seat us on the bench obediently. We would lick the dirt off the church floor, dig our noses, poke the neighbour's kid in the eye and do the merciful duty of distracting everyone in the aisle while the father went on about the good word.

As an adult it's considerably harder. Your eyes droop, your limbs fail you and your neck hangs limply until you awake suddenly to find that the priest is still at the pulpit. You look around and you are met with the disapproving stare of the local auntie who's silently berating you for falling asleep to the word of God. It's sometimes even more unfortunate if you do stay awake. The person next to you may inevitably be snoring away or, heaven forbid, may have drool down the side of their cheek. A lot of Catholics, my family notwithstanding, will be appalled that I'm openly pooh-poohing tradition so as to speak but I'm not. I'm just at loss to understand that why the simple message of doing good deeds needs a verbose discourse that, more often that not, gets lost in translation.

A priest from my last parish, God bless his soul, was the most lovable man away from the pulpit. I distinctly even remember him handing me a cough drop after I broke into a rather violent fit in the confessional box many years ago. However on the pulpit, he would pull out a sheaf of papers, read out his sermon in monotone and return to the ceremony. I couldn't think too badly of him. As for the rest of the parish, I can't say. He couldn't have handed out that many cough drops. There are many things that my faith proposes that I tend to dispose. However, after a considerable period of time I find myself nodding heartily with fathers in their cassocks as they tell their clergy what admen have been doggedly muttering over years u2013 that to make it work you need to
KISS u2013 keep it short and simple, I mean.