Preach: The Catholic Homilies Podcast

In the Judeo-Christian tradition, God often makes Godself known through sound: be it a voice from a burning bush, a resounding clap of thunder or the blast of a trumpet. “God is revealed through sound,” affirms Ed Foley, O.F.M. Cap. “I think of a homily as sound theology,” he adds, “it’s acoustic engagement.”When preparing to preach, Ed, the Duns Scotus Professor Emeritus of Spirituality and a retired professor from the Catholic Theological Union in Chicago, first writes his homilies word for word in poetic form. Then, he meticulously annotates his manuscript, like a conductor’s score. “Where’s the crescendo?” he asks himself. “Where’s the pause? When do the trumpets come in?”Practice extends beyond the art of the homily, permeating life itself. It is, perhaps, a vital Christian practice as we enter the Easter season of Christ’s resurrection. “The followers of Jesus practiced resurrection,” Ed says in his homily on “Preach” for the Mass of the Day this Easter Sunday. “Their dogged commitment to living an Easter spirituality and pass it on from one generation to the next, usually at great cost, is why we stand missioned to practice resurrection again today,” But, even though prudent preparation is necessary, there must always be enough room to veer from the script when you’re standing in front of a congregation.“Improvisation is not shooting from the hip. We learned this from people, from standup comics, improvisation is taking what somebody gives you and doing something with it. It’s preparation,” Ed says. “The text is not the performance, just like a script is not a play, a score is not music.”Read the Scripture readings for the Mass of the Day on Easter Sunday, The Resurrection of our LordGet daily Scripture reflections and support “Preach” by becoming a digital subscriber to America Magazine“Preach” is made possible through the generous support of the Compelling Preaching Initiative, a project of Lilly Endowment Inc.  Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

When reflecting on the life, death and resurrection of the Lord while living in a state of military invasion and active war, Andriy Zelinskyy, S.J., says that “everything becomes more authentic.” For this Jesuit priest, who serves as the chief military chaplain of the Ukrainian-Greek Catholic Church, the task of preaching to those suffering in Ukraine, “from the trenches to the President,” has brought the challenge and promise of preaching hope on Good Friday into stark relief.To authentically preach the hope of the resurrection in such dire circumstances, preachers must first find hope themselves. “It begins with your search for hope,” Andriy shares with “Preach” host Ricardo da Silva, S.J. “And this is already a result of your search for sense, to find God in everything that’s happening around you.” Andriy tries not to rely too much on certain techniques to communicate God’s message. Instead, he actively searches for God in his experience. “I’m not against the techniques,” he says. “They’re important, but in their due time. When you are in front of a living human being, please be a living human and be in the here and now.”Listen to Andriy’s homily and his conversation with Ricardo to hear how he sustains himself to preach hope amid war. They discuss the common humanity that allows Andriy to preach to people of all stripes and how his experience informs his preaching.Read the Scripture readings for Good Friday of the Lord’s PassionGet daily Scripture reflections and support “Preach” by becoming a digital subscriber to America Magazine“Preach” is made possible through the generous support of the Compelling Preaching Initiative, a project of Lilly Endowment Inc.  Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

The liturgies of Holy Week need to be seen as a unity. With two weeks remaining before the start of this summit of the Christian year, the “Preach” team sought the expertise of two esteemed liturgical scholars and practitioners to give preachers a whistle-stop tour of the readings and liturgies for this sacred week.In conversation with “Preach” host Ricardo da Silva, S.J., Kim Harris and John Baldovin, S.J., discuss the connection of present-day social issues like antisemitism and state-sanctioned violence to Christ’s Passion and Resurrection. They encourage preachers to weave these grim realities into their homilies for Holy Week.Amid the richness of words, actions, movement, and song in these liturgies, it’s essential to uphold the values of silence and brevity in preaching during Holy Week.“The missal recommends that the preacher preach briefly,” John stresses. “It takes a lot more time to prepare a brief homily than it does to prepare a long homily.”Read the Scripture readings for Holy Week, Year B.Get daily Scripture reflections and support "Preach" by becoming a digital subscriber to America Magazine.“Preach” is made possible through the generous support of the Compelling Preaching Initiative, a project of Lilly Endowment Inc.  Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

“Explain the resurrection to me in two minutes without using any church language.” This is the challenge that Father Rob Galea sets for his staff to ensure they can easily relate to the young people they serve. “That takes practice, and that takes hanging out with the kids and understanding the way they speak, the way they reason.”Rob, originally from Malta, is now a priest in the Diocese of Sandhurst, Victoria, Australia. He has amassed a hundreds of thousands-strong following across social media platforms and is also a popular singer and songwriter who once auditioned for X-Factor Australia. Today, Rob leads Icon Ministry—formerly FRG Ministry, a global media and outreach apostolate that significantly expanded its reach over the pandemic years.On “Preach,” Rob delivers a homily for the Fourth Sunday in Lent, Year B, also known as Laetare, or Rejoicing Sunday.When asked about effective preaching strategies to use when ministering to young people, Rob suggests preachers allow themselves to become vulnerable and share current, real-life experiences. “Start with you, with your struggle, with someone, or something that happened within the school, something that they know,” he says, “And, for goodness’ sake, stop using church language.”Read the full text of this week’s homily and Scripture readings.Do you have a preacher to recommend for “Preach,” Let us know here.Get daily Scripture reflections and support "Preach" by becoming a digital subscriber to America Magazine.“Preach” is made possible through the generous support of the Compelling Preaching Initiative, a project of Lilly Endowment Inc.  Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

The best formation Deacon Steve Kramer has ever received were the four summers he spent as a taxi and limo driver. “It really prepared me for pastoral counseling,” he says of his year’s shuttling people back and forth. “They sit, they open their heart, and pretty much they figure out that they’ll never see you again. So they open up in a different way.On “Preach,” Steve delivers a homily for the Third Sunday of Lent, initiating the Scrutinies for catechumens in the O.C.I.A. process. Departing from the usual Year C readings, Year A Scriptures are employed, better suited for those preparing for Baptism at the Easter Vigil. The Scrutinies prompt catechumens to confront their sinfulness and embrace God’s merciful love through reflection, repentance and exorcism.Listen to Steve’s homily on this week’s episode of “Preach.” In their conversation afterwards, Steve and host Ricardo da Silva, S.J., discuss preaching to the needs of the community, the importance of listening and balancing themes of sin and God’s merciful love when preaching.Read the full text of this week’s homily and Scripture readings.Do you have a preacher to recommend for “Preach,” Let us know here.Get daily Scripture reflections and support "Preach" by becoming a digital subscriber to America Magazine.“Preach” is made possible through the generous support of the Compelling Preaching Initiative, a project of Lilly Endowment Inc.  Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

“Effective preaching is like good butter sinking into warm toast,” says Karla Bellinger. “You’ve gotta give the Holy Spirit a little bit of time to do some work.” As the founding executive director of the Institute for Homiletics at the University of Dallas and president of the Catholic Association of Teachers of Homiletics, Karla is filled with bits of wisdom like this for homilists. “The God of the universe who is infinite also wants to be the God who is intimate and close,” Karla says in her homily for the Second Sunday of Lent. “God wants to dazzle us.” In many ways, this is the mission of the homilist: helping people in the pews draw closer to God and prompting a dazzling encounter. Karla would know; as a lay woman and homiletician, she coaches and trains preachers—mostly ordained Catholic men—to give effective homilies. Preaching is a “pastoral act,” she says. Through every homily, “you want your people to come closer to God.”Listen to Karla’s homily on this week’s episode of “Preach.” After delivering her homily, Karla explores with host Ricardo da Silva, S.J., some of the quick- and long-term fixes preachers can make to improve their homilies such that people in the pews can really hear what the preacher—and God—has to say.Read the full text of this week’s homily and Scripture readings.Do you have a preacher to recommend for “Preach,” Let us know here.Get daily Scripture reflections and support "Preach" by becoming a digital subscriber to America Magazine.“Preach” is made possible through the generous support of the Compelling Preaching Initiative, a project of Lilly Endowment Inc.  Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Russell Pollitt, S.J., approaches his homilies in a manner unlike any other preacher the “Preach” team has yet seen. While some rely on verbatim manuscripts, detailed linear plans, or simply loose notes, when this South African Jesuit priest sits down to write his homily after praying on the Scriptures, the first thing he does is produce an org chart (or organogram, as it’s better known outside the U.S.).” But, by the time Russell stands in front of the congregation to deliver his homily, the organogram has served its purpose and is nowhere to be seen. “I get a picture of that organogram in my head,” he says, “so that on a Sunday, I can stand up and I can preach without notes,” Russell is the superior of the Jesuits in Johannesburg and the director of the Jesuit Institute South Africa. For the First Sunday of Lent, Year B, Russell chooses to center his homily on a seemingly straightforward question: “What is Lent?” He offers three central lenses through which to consider the question. Think of Lent, he says, as a new start, a reminder and our desert.In his conversation with Ricardo after the homily, Russell elaborates on his organizational methods for preaching and reveals how his brother’s suicide and presiding over the funeral of a toddler who drowned, compelled him to rethink his “​own ​style” of preaching and even his “own ​theological ​framework,” he says. “It’s ​really ​heightened ​my ​own ​sensitivity ​to ​being ​with ​people ​who ​are ​bereaved, ​and ​preaching ​at ​a ​funeral.”Read the full text of this week’s homily and Scripture readings.Do you have a preacher to recommend for “Preach,” Let us know here.Get daily Scripture reflections and support "Preach" by becoming a digital subscriber to America Magazine.“Preach” is made possible through the generous support of the Compelling Preaching Initiative, a project of Lilly Endowment Inc.  Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Cardinal Roche opens the Lenten season on “Preach: The Catholic Homilies Podcast” with a heartfelt message taken from the Scripture readings for Ash Wednesday: “Come back to me with all your heart.” When asked by host Ricardo da Silva, S.J., why he chose the theme of “Welcome Home” and not to preach “in a heavier way,” to emphasize the penitential nature of the season, the cardinal, who is the most senior Vatican official to appear on the show, simply replies: “Well, because I think, really, that’s what Lent is all about.”Cardinal Roche serves as the prefect of the Dicastery for Divine Worship and the Discipline of the Sacraments and is a former chairman of the International Commission on English in the Liturgy (ICEL). On the show, he not only imparts Lenten preaching wisdom but also shares his insights into Pope Francis’ synodal vision and emphasizes the need for preachers to meticulously prepare their homilies:“I would say, really, take preaching—take your homily very, very seriously. And don’t be the person who looks on Saturday night to see what he has to say on Sunday morning.”Read the full text of this week’s homily and Scripture readings.Do you have a preacher to recommend for “Preach,” Let us know here.Get daily Scripture reflections and support "Preach" by becoming a digital subscriber to America Magazine.“Preach” is made possible through the generous support of the Compelling Preaching Initiative, a project of Lilly Endowment Inc.  Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

You may have seen that we haven’t had any episodes for the last two weeks. We are taking a break after the bumper set of episodes we put together for you during the Advent and Christmas seasons. We are reviewing the results of our survey—which you can still respond to here— and planning our offering for Lent.In the meantime, in this great week when we celebrate the extraordinary contributions of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr, to racial and social justice in the U.S. and beyond, we’re re-airing an episode with preacher Bryan Massingale, titled "Preaching the kingdom of God when justice is delayed on earth." This episode originally aired on the 15th Sunday in Ordinary Time this past July.Bryan is a priest of the Archdiocese of Milwaukee, and presently lives and works in New York City as a professor of theology at Fordham University. He is a leader in the quest for faith-based racial and sexual justice, especially within the Catholic Church, and regularly presides and preaches at the The Parish of St. Charles Borromeo Resurrection and All Saints, the mother church for Black Catholics in the Archdiocese of New York. This year is the 40th anniversary of his priestly ordination. Listen to Bryan’s homily for the 15th Sunday in Ordinary Time, Year A, on this week’s episode of “Preach.” After the homily, he shares with host Ricardo da Silva, S.J., a less-rehearsed reading of the well-known parable of the sower in the Gospel of Matthew.Read the full text of this week’s homily and Scripture readingsDo you have a preacher to recommend for Preach? Let us know here.Get daily Scripture reflections and support "Preach" by becoming a digital subscriber to America Magazine.“Preach” is made possible through the generous support of the Compelling Preaching Initiative, a project of Lilly Endowment Inc. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Preaching on the Solemnity of the Epiphany of the Lord, David Neuhaus, S.J., explores a curiosity in the story of the Wise Men’s journey from the East to the Bethlehem manger. “Why didn’t the star take them straight to Bethlehem? Why did it take them to Jerusalem?,” he asks. "I think it took them to Jerusalem, as we are always taken to Jerusalem, because we must encounter the scriptures of Israel,” he continues. “It is from the Scriptures of Israel that they will receive the precise destination to which they are going—Bethlehem.”[Take a quick listener survey: Tell us what you love about “Preach” and what you’d like us to change]David, a Jesuit priest and Scripture scholar of the Near-East province of the Jesuits, was born into Judaism in South Africa but has lived most of his life in the Holy Land. Firmly declaring his roots, he states, “I was born a Jew and remain a Jew,” he states, firmly declaring his roots. “I didn't have any faith until I became a Catholic.” Over the course of his ministry as a Jesuit, he has dedicated himself to teaching Scripture in both Israel and Palestine. Notably, from 2008 to 2017, he served as the vicar for the Hebrew-speaking Catholic community in Israel. Presently, he splits his time between Johannesburg and Jerusalem. On this week's “Preach,” host Ricardo da Silva, S.J., delves into David’s questioning of the route  the Magi took to see Jesus and its implications for the Sunday Mass readings. “There is always some intimate connection between the first reading from the Old Testament and the third reading from the Gospel,” David notes. “​I ​would ​also ​say ​that ​it ​is ​very ​helpful ​when ​we ​realize ​that ​what ​we ​are ​called ​to ​do ​in ​a ​homily ​is ​to ​make ​Jesus ​alive, ​bring ​Jesus ​alive, ​and ​that ​Jesus ​is ​made ​alive ​by ​explicit ​texts ​about ​Jesus ​in ​the ​New ​Testament, ​and ​an ​implicit ​​promise ​of ​Jesus ​in ​the ​Old ​Testament.Read the full text of this week’s homily and Scripture readings.Do you have a preacher to recommend for “Preach,” Let us know here.Get daily Scripture reflections and support "Preach" by becoming a digital subscriber to America Magazine.“Preach” is made possible through the generous support of the Compelling Preaching Initiative, a project of Lilly Endowment Inc.  Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices