Part of being an effective homilist is precisely a willingness to abandon your hours of careful work to respond to events and to the Spirit’s prompting.
Read moreCategory: Ars Praedicandi
Ars Praedicandi: Sermon on Fifth Sunday after Pentecost
We tend to think that we can imprint righteousness on society through legislation, but in today’s letter of St. Paul to the Romans, St. Paul reminds us that God’s righteousness—the very righteousness that Jesus has called us to pursue in this life—is located not in a body of legislation, but in a person.
Read moreArs Praedicandi: Jesus Calms the Storm
For the purposes of this preaching series, we might talk about the pros and cons of preaching without a text.
Read moreArs Praedicandi: The Kingdom and the Church, Decay and Growth
The mustard seed is a parable of human life. A parable of the church’s way of growing and dying and rising again. A parable of the life of Jesus.
Read moreArs Praedicandi: Homily for a Ritual Mass for the Anointing of the Sick
The pastoral team at a local Nashville parish has asked me to give a series of adult education sessions this fall on healing and the Pastoral Care of the Sick, including suggested reading for the more engaged participants.
Read moreArs Praedicandi: Preaching the Trinity
The doctrine of the Trinity is clearly a–perhaps the–central doctrine of the Christian faith. So why does it so terrify preachers?
Read moreArs Praedicandi: Preaching with the Bible in one hand and the newspaper in the other.
Despite the very real risks involved, we need to preach in a way that engages not only the personal lives of our congregations, but the social lives of our cities, states, and nations.
Read moreArs Praedicandi: Examples from a Papal Preacher
This resource could be helpful to many preachers in need of a little inspiration when composing their homilies.
Read moreArs Praedicandi: Homily for Good Friday
God died so that we could live. That was the way that God chose for us to be able to live. We couldn’t live – we can’t live – by ourselves. By ourselves, all we can do is be born, and sin, and die. We can’t save ourselves. If we will live – and we will live – it is because, and only because, God died for us.
Read moreArs Praedicandi: Homilists for the Homeless
Over the course of the past three years a group of preachers and writers have come together to produce a series of books grouped together as Homilists for the Homeless. The series is based on the three-year cycle of Sunday lectionary readings and is now complete with the release of the third book.
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