By John Gribowich, March 27, 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.
Recently on retreat in Big Sur, I spent much time gazing at the vast Pacific Ocean, thinking about how to preach to people whose spiritual lives no longer fit the categories they grew up with. This is the challenge of what many psychologists and spiritual writers call “second half of life” spirituality—and it’s a challenge institutional Catholicism often struggles to address.
The second half of life isn’t about age. A person can be twenty-five or seventy-five when crossing this threshold. Rather, it’s about encountering reality in a way that challenges the paradigms and norms that formed them. It’s about those moments when the prescriptive models of faith—the dogma, doctrine, morality, rules, practices, devotions, sacramental life—suddenly seem insufficient to address what someone is actually experiencing.
Institutional Catholicism excels at first half of life formation. When someone enters the Church, they’re greeted with a robust container: clear teachings, structured practices, defined pathways to holiness. These aren’t bad things. They provide genuine guidance for living a good life and opening oneself to God’s grace. The problem comes when life throws something unexpected—a loss, a betrayal, an illness, a confusion that doesn’t fit any of the existing religious categories. Suddenly a person feels like an exception to the prescriptive model. But here’s the thing: they’re not an exception. This is the model, because every single person is unique, and every single person has been wounded in a unique way.
How God desires to heal us, make us whole, and transform our wounds into gifts for others—this is a deeply subjective process. Saying yes to that process, entering through that threshold, is what crossing into the second half of life means.
I know this from my own experience. I had entered seminary initially, but left for reasons I couldn’t fully articulate at the time. It was only later, while studying art history at a secular university, that I came to understand what had happened. Surrounded by people pursuing creativity with authenticity and passion, I realized that a vocation to the priesthood couldn’t be about performing a role—it needed to be uniquely creative, an expression of my authentic self. I could not be fully myself unless I was a priest, but only if priesthood meant being genuinely me.
The Preacher’s Dilemma
So what should a preacher do when facing a congregation where the majority are content with first half of life spirituality, but a smaller group have crossed into second half of life territory? Here’s what matters: those second half of life people could become the greatest advocates for the entire religious experience—precisely because they’ve encountered both the container’s wisdom and its limitations. They know what the tradition offers because they’ve lived it deeply enough to discover where it needs to expand. Or they could jettison it completely, because nothing speaks to them anymore—including the sacraments themselves.
This is why preachers need to be attuned to those in the second half of life. We can’t afford to lose them.
The first question preachers must ask themselves is: Have I myself integrated a second half of life spirituality? Am I open to it? The easiest way to know is this: Can I think of a moment in my life that was extremely difficult, when something unexpected arrived that didn’t fit into any of my existing categories or boxes?
Those moments are essential for the preacher. When we can look at the Scripture assigned to us and speak from those experiences—from the unconventional means by which we experienced God’s blessing—that’s when some of the most effective preaching happens. Because now we’re not just sharing personal likes, passions, or opinions. We’re giving a reverential place to the power of grace working in our own lives.
For example, in a recent homily I shared the story of my own beat-up car from high school—a $700 Chevy Nova that I had declared was “my life.” I didn’t use the story to offer quick fixes or prescriptive advice, but to name how my father’s wisdom—hoping that car wasn’t my life—contained more grace than I could have recognized at sixteen. Rather than treating my teenage fixation as simply misguided, I tried to show how that wound, that misplaced attachment, was exactly the place where God desired to work and to teach me about freedom and love.
All Is Grace
At the end of the day, all is grace. The way a preacher conveys how grace has worked in their life can propel listeners to seek how God’s grace is working in theirs. I define grace as the unexpected moments, unexpected persons, unexpected experiences that provide a remedy and means for healing.
This is preaching that maintains the centrality of Jesus the healer while also honoring the unique voice of that healing presence as embodied by the preacher themselves. It’s vulnerable work. It requires us to speak from our wounds. But it’s also the kind of preaching that can hold together a congregation spanning both halves of life—honoring the wisdom of the container while making space for those whose experience has broken them open beyond it.
The ocean reminds me that God’s grace moves like water: it takes the shape of whatever vessel receives it, but it cannot be contained by that vessel alone. This is the wisdom of second half of life spirituality—not abandoning the container that formed us, but recognizing that grace is always larger than any vessel we construct to hold it. Our preaching must honor both realities at once.
To watch Fr. John’s homily, see below:
Fr. John Gribowich is a Catholic priest, theology teacher, and campus minister at Sacred Heart Cathedral Preparatory High School in San Francisco, CA. He earned his undergraduate degree in history and theology at DeSales University and studied theology at St. Charles Borromeo Seminary in Wynnewood, PA and St. Joseph’s Seminary (Dunwoodie) in Yonkers, NY. He was ordained a priest for the Diocese of Brooklyn, NY in 2015 and has been an adjunct lecturer at DeSales University, Immaculata University, and St. John’s University (Jamaica, NY). Additionally, John has graduate degrees in art history and library science from Pratt Institute in Brooklyn and an MBA from the Haas School of Business at UC Berkeley. He has contributed articles and interviews to Magnificat, The Tablet, and the National Catholic Reporter. Along with theology and art history his personal interests include meditation, reading, running, and the music of Bob Dylan.
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