By Charles A. Bobertz, February 4, 2026
This post is part of the Obsculta Preaching Series, sponsored by the Obsculta Preaching Initiative at Saint John’s School of Theology and Seminary.
I will never forget the moment 28 years ago. Newly ordained as a deacon for the Diocese of Saint Cloud Minnesota, I had vested for Sunday Mass and was standing in the back of the Church. I overheard one of our parishioners say to his wife, “oh no, a deacon is probably preaching at this Mass.” Needless to say, then, and in some respects even now, deacons who preach regularly, or even occasionally, have to overcome a good bit of skepticism about how good the deacon’s homily will be.
My Ph.D. is in biblical studies and early Christianity and, after some post-doctoral study in Homiletics at the Aquinas Institute in Saint Louis, I taught homiletics to seminarians and diaconal candidates for fifteen years. Much of this teaching had to do with the basic mechanics of communication: posture, voice modulation, eye contact etc. These basics are of course vital to good preaching. But there were three other topics covered in these classes that also made a significant difference in quality between the first practice homily and first homily preached to a congregation at Mass.
The first of these topics was the effort to explore thoroughly the ancient idea of the sensus plenior, the fuller spiritual sense of Scripture. This exploration went further than the necessary practice of lectio divina, the practice of sitting and praying quietly with the Scriptures in an effort to discern how they speak to us in our lives and in our church today.
The engagement with the sensus plenior often brings one face to face with the history of biblical interpretation, especially the allegorical and typological interpretation so prevalent in the thousand years prior to the Enlightenment.[1] What this did for my students was to open them up to thinking about the Scriptures expansively rather than narrowly, the possible meanings of Scripture rather than the meaning of Scripture. Our work together gave them the license to think about the Scriptures not so much as dictum – what we must do – but as poetry, to communicate the experience of God’s love expressed in words.
The second additional topic of these classes was directed more specifically to the diaconal candidates in the class (though I must say my seminarians participated with gusto!). We would explore together, always mindful of propriety and privacy, the stories of family life. Then we would bring these stories into conversation with the Scriptures assigned for a particular homily. This helped the students to connect ordinary life to the Scriptures and the Scriptures to ordinary life, connections made even more vivid by the previous time spent with the sensus plenior of Scripture.
In fact, it always amazed me when candidates would ask whether such stories could or should be the basis of a homily. My response has always been that stories – again, within proper limits of propriety and privacy – are what stick with people. Jesus told stories and the Gospels largely are stories. The trick here is to link our personal and family life stories to the Story of God in the Scriptures, the Story of God being for us, most especially in the life, death and resurrection of Jesus Christ.
Indeed, ever since my own ordination and developing my first homilies, my conviction has been that the good and often poignant stories of marriage and family life can and quite often should be included within the repertoire of diaconal homilies. In my experience it is often what touches people the most and therefore – always connected with how Scripture is speaking to us today – among the more effective homilies I have preached.
The third topic of our class together was perhaps the most secular and, if truth be told, what improved my students’ preaching the most. The idea was given to me by a fellow homiletics professor at Saint Meinrad’s School of Theology. We read and discussed a popular marketing book by Chip and Dan Heath, Made to Stick. The book uses both social science and anecdotal stories (stories again!) to explore how ideas stick with people and hopefully change behavior. One story in particular, how the State of Texas came up with the marketing campaign to combat litter, “Don’t Mess with Texas,” always helped my students to develop memorable phrases that gave memorable themes to their homilies. Years later I still remember one student homily in particular, the phrase repeated at key points of the homily was “he who has ears should hear,” straight out of Mark 4:23.
Homilies, like homilists, are incarnational. The Spirit that works in one homilist will likely fall flat when preached by a different homilist. This is why I have always advised against the use of homily services so readily available on-line these days. If the people of God see God’s work in the particular circumstances, life experience and education of a homilist, they will be more likely to be opened to the work of God amongst us in our time and place. Less important, but worth all of our effort as preachers, is to avoid overhearing the phrase, “oh no, a deacon is probably preaching at this Mass.”
[1] Resources for exploring ancient practices of biblical interpretation are less than ideal. Invaluable is the commentary series edited by Thomas Oden, Ancient Christian Commentary on Scripture (InterVarsity Press).
See also Susan Boynton and Diane J. Reilly, eds. The Practice of the Bible in the Middle Ages : Production, Reception & Performance in Western Christianity (Columbia University Press).
Charles A. Bobertz is professor emeritus from Saint John’s School of Theology in Collegeville where he taught New Testament, Patristics and Homiletics for thirty years. He now serves as a Deacon for Pax Christi Catholic Community in Eden Prairie, Minnesota.
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