Pastoral exhortations – a key to preliminary homiletic research

Abstract

Preaching the Word of God is one of the basic functions of the Church. An enormous role in this area was played by the Fathers of the Church, who left a considerable output as preachers. By discovering the wealth of their homilies, sermons and speeches, the material is continuously analysed in terms of its content and theology. A proper content-related discussion can be facilitated by a new criterion of research based on “pastoral exhortations.” This term means different kinds of appeals, calls, incentives or even orders. It can be done on the basis of two ordering criteria: philological and content-related ones. Taking into consideration the quantity, the leading topics and the content of the analysed source material, that is the speeches, homilies and sermons, can be precisely defined.

Keywords

• Ekshortacja pastoralna
• kwerenda
• homiletyka
• metodologia