How can I preach as a foreigner?

By Aric Serrano, SJ, January 23, 2026

This post continues the Obsculta Preaching Series, sponsored by the Obsculta Preaching Initiative at Saint John’s School of Theology and Seminary.

After my ordination to the priesthood within the Society of Jesus in June 2023, I was missioned to St. Peter Claver Parish in Punta Gorda, Belize. The parish is vast, encompassing over thirty Mayan village churches and twenty-eight primary schools across the Toledo District. Very quickly, beyond the sheer size of the parish, I confronted a more personal and pastoral challenge: How was I going to preach meaningfully to the Belizean Mayan community as a foreigner?

I turned to Pope Francis for guidance. Three insights from Evangelii Gaudium have shaped my approach to preaching in a cultural context not my own:

1. Preaching must remain faithful to the Gospel.
2. The preacher must love the community he serves.
3. The homily must connect to daily life.

These points have helped me as I continue to learn about the culture and the people that I serve. I reflect on them below.

First, the art of preaching is fundamentally about sharing the Gospel. It invites the listener to encounter God as revealed by Jesus Christ. There is always a temptation to reduce the homily to abstractions, lists, or syllogisms. But the homily is not a classroom lecture—its purpose is contemplation of the beauty, integrity, and transformative power of the Gospel. Francis writes, “When preaching is faithful to the Gospel, the centrality of certain truths is evident and it becomes clear that Christian morality is not a form of stoicism, or self-denial, or merely a practical philosophy or a catalogue of sins and faults.” Francis encourages preaching to go beyond reductive claims and to engage with the whole of the faith.

Pope Benedict XVI captures this beautifully in Deus Caritas Est: “Being a Christian is not the result of an ethical choice or a lofty idea, but the encounter with an event, a person, which gives life a new horizon and a decisive direction.” Preaching, at its best, fosters this encounter with God.

I quickly discovered a deep hunger for the Gospel in Belize. Village churches are often full on Sundays. People ask me after Mass the meaning of certain Scripture passages. Parents request sacraments for their children. This desire to know God encouraged me, but it also reminded me of a second point from Francis: the preacher must genuinely love the community he serves.

I have learned that to love a community means to know it. Francis writes: “The preacher must know the heart of his community, in order to realize where its desire for God is alive and ardent, as well as where that dialogue, once loving, has been thwarted and is now barren.”

I wanted to know the people I would be preaching to in the Mayan villages. This meant spending time with them and hearing their stories.

Francis insists on the practice of listening within a community:

“We need to practice the art of listening, which is more than simply hearing. Listening, in communication, is an openness of heart.”

This kind of listening is essential for preaching. By staying overnight in the villages, visiting homes, and spending time with families, I gradually learned what village life is like. Toledo District is an enchanted place and the rhythms of Mayan spirituality shape village life. Belief in evil spirits and curses is real, and people often ask the priest to bless them for protection. I have blessed gallons of holy water and countless homes. Access to healthcare is difficult, and the priest is often called to visit the sick for anointings. Most homes have an altar where the family prays. Once, a village asked that Mass be offered for their crops because a plague of rats was eating the corn. At another Mass, I found bats in a box under the altar; they believe the grace from Mass pacifies animals. Along with the spiritual concerns are social challenges, including land rights, violence against women, and alcoholism.

I bring everything I hear to prayer and ask God to help me love the people I meet. Entering these rhythms of life allows me to help people see how the Gospel illumines the world they know. This leads to my final point: Connecting the readings to daily life.

Jesus himself gives us the model of how to speak about God and how to connect it to daily life. He uses images people of his time understood – planting, harvesting tending the land. These images are meaningful in Toledo, where village life follows the rhythm of the farm. Men work in the fields; women care for the home; children help with chores—feeding chickens or going to the family plot. I preach that practicing the spiritual life is like tending a farm: we must clear it and cultivate it through the sacraments, prayer, and acts of charity. Village life also depends on acts of reciprocity; neighbors help one another thatch their roofs and plant their milpas. Many families practice the mayejak, offering thanksgiving to God – sometimes through the sacrifice of turkey and burning copal. I connect this with the call to recognize God’s blessings and to give praise for all we have received.

During school Masses in the villages, I speak about Christ as our friend. The students are primary school age, and they understand friendship instinctively. They describe a friend as someone who is kind, generous, and faithful. I describe how Jesus loves us in these same ways and how we are invited to respond. A little girl grew so excited about this that she exclaimed during my homily: “I want to be friends with Jesus!” Moments like these reveal how the Gospel speaks most powerfully when it is woven into the real experiences of a community.

Preaching in Toledo District has taught me that the Gospel becomes alive when the preacher listens, loves, and speaks in a way that resonates with the concrete life of the people. In this encounter—between Gospel and culture, between preacher and community—the Holy Spirit does the work of opening hearts to God’s love.

Fr. Aric Serrano, SJ, is associate pastor at St. Peter Claver Parish in Punta Gorda, Belize. He enjoys reading and writing on his spare time. You can find his substack here: https://aricserrano.substack.com/