Category: Ars Praedicandi

Luke’s shaping of Jesus’ teaching into an instruction manual for would-be disciples reminds us that announcing God’s reign is also a battle quite often with ourselves – a battle to model in our own living the discipleship that our baptism expects us to hand on to others.

Beauty may seem a fragile, even futile weapon against brutalization and violence, but it was the terrible beauty of the only-begotten in his unforgettable embrace of enemies on Golgatha that defeated death and brought life to the world.

Sometimes we have spiritual ear blockage, an inability to hear God speaking through unfamiliar, sometimes accented voices that sound an internal alarm about some potential enemy rather than another child of God.

This silent night could be no more than a quaint moment in which we offer congratulations to a young homeless couple occupying a handsome crèche with only one child and no Misha, and no other orphans to be seen. Or it can be a vocational plunge that commits us to allow the child to be…

From deep want, experiences of abundance. From profound sorry, the potential for delight. From isolating loneliness, the emergence of community. From impenetrable darkness, the promise of an eternal dawn.

by Fr. Edward Foley, Capuchin Eugene Lowry is a favorite homilist, especially celebrated for his somewhat subversive approach to preaching. [1] Lowry has argued that the problem with most preachers is that they give away the plot too early in the homily, akin to Shakespeare walking to the apron of the stage before the premiere…

In the spirit of Mack the turtle maybe it is time for Catholic Christians metaphorically again to burb.

Apocalyptic end times … and the Johnnie football game.

To inject new meaning, even vitality into this crucial commandment, what if we replace the over-used language of “love” with a vocabulary of reverence?