This post continues the Obsculta Preaching Series, sponsored by the Obsculta Preaching Initiative at Saint John’s School of Theology and Seminary. In these posts, our authors engage a variety of ways in which scripture, preaching, and liturgical worship interact with the life of the faithful.
During my third year of the Master of Divinity program at the University of Notre Dame, my ministry placement was a new initiative called the Young Preachers Institute (YPI). YPI was a ministry I shared with a Holy Cross seminarian classmate who is now an ordained priest. Together, we developed a faith formation program centered around preaching for undergraduate students at Holy Cross College. We met weekly for communal formation where we preached to the students, introduced new ways of praying with Scripture, taught them how to engage in theological reflection, and invited them to discover their own voice in preaching. We also met individually with students every other week to accompany them as they set personal, professional, and preaching goals.
This ministry was a collaborative initiative with St. Adalbert, a local parish in South Bend. Twice a month, the undergraduate students led youth group sessions and preached to the high schoolers. We would gather in the chapel, one of the undergraduates would proclaim a reading from Scripture, and then that student would break open the reading through preaching. Each of the undergraduate students then led a small group which would meet for faith sharing to continue breaking open the word and discussing what they had heard. Our goal was to empower both undergraduate and high school students to live into their call to be missionary disciples and to participate fully in the life of the church.
What has stayed with me most from this experience is that it was a radical example of co-responsibility for the church’s mission to proclaim the Gospel. Though it took place before the Synod on Synodality began, it paints a picture of what it looks like to be a synodal church. A lay woman and male seminarian teaching preaching together, a college and a parish collaborating together, young people accompanying other young people, graduate students preaching to undergrads, undergraduate students preaching to high schoolers, and all of us walking together and deepening our faith.
I wish this were the normative model for preaching in the Catholic church. Unfortunately, it’s not. Many of the faithful believe preaching is something done exclusively by priests, and there is often little room for lay people to be co-responsible for this ministry. For many Catholics, an experience of preaching is largely limited to listening to homilies. And often, this experience has primarily been negative. In synod listening sessions conducted around the world, homilies were “unanimously reported as a problem” (Enlarge the Space of Your Tent, paragraph 93). Over a decade ago, Pope Francis also drew our attention to this problem observing that “the faithful…and their ordained ministers suffer because of homilies” (Evangelii Gaudium, paragraph 135.)
In Evangelii Gaudium, Francis names two ecclesial challenges that prevent lay people from participating in the work of proclaiming the Gospel. In some cases, lay people have not been given the formation needed to take on responsibilities. In other cases, room has not been made for lay people due to excessive clericalism. YPI overcame both of these obstacles. Students were given ample opportunities for both individual and communal formation, and space was made for them to not only discern and develop their gifts but also to exercise them for the good of others in the church.
Too often, lay people are described solely as evangelists who witness to Christ by living in the world. This is a worthy goal, but only part of our call. Lay people can—and should—also use their words to preach the gospel! Through YPI, students honed the craft of using words and preached more formally for the good of the church. I would love to see additional spaces for preaching created in our dioceses, parishes, and schools to hear from lay people and from young people in particular.
I am sometimes tempted to think about the ministry of preaching from a perspective of scarcity –good homilies are often in short supply and other opportunities to hear good preaching or to preach myself can feel very limited. However, my experience with YPI reminds me to think about the ministry of preaching from a perspective of abundance that extends beyond the homily.
Megan Effron is a doctoral candidate in systematic theology at the University of Notre Dame. Her dissertation draws on the writings of French Dominican Yves Congar as a foundation from which to construct a theology of preaching, with a particular focus on lay preaching. She lives in La Porte, Indiana with her husband and son.
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