ANNOUNCEMENTS

The Institute for Homiletics at the University of Dallas was recently awarded a one-million-dollar grant from Lilly Endowment Inc. to help renew liturgical preaching to better reach Catholic youth and young adults. The Institute is a collaborative endeavor of The Catholic Foundation (Dallas) and the University of Dallas. 

The five-year grant made to the University of Dallas will enable the Institute for Homiletics to implement the Into Deeper Waters: Renewing Liturgical Preaching to Reach Young Catholics initiative. The project will develop resources to respond to two pressing needs of the Catholic Church: 1) the need to improve liturgical preaching so that it brings the people into an encounter with the living God, and 2) the need for effective preaching at Mass to reach and impact the lives of Catholic youth and young adults.

“We are just getting launched as an organization. We have high hopes,” says Dr. Karla Bellinger, executive director of the Institute.  “I am grateful to Lilly Endowment Inc. for trusting in our potential to impact Catholic liturgical preaching. The lay faithful are thoroughly convinced about the need for better preaching in the context of the Mass; they have already been generous in endowing our operations fund. They hunger for more compelling preaching — for themselves, for their children, and for their grandchildren. This grant from Lilly Endowment Inc. will help us to grow our capacity and our outreach, especially in teaching priests and deacons to better connect with the young Catholic Church.” 

“The University of Dallas is proud to be the home of the Institute for Homiletics and grateful to The Catholic Foundation for such a fruitful partnership,” said University of Dallas President Jonathan J. Sanford. “We are tremendously grateful as well for the Lilly Endowment’s generous support to improve the effectiveness of liturgical preaching among youth and young adults, who are the future of the Church.”

The project is being funded through Lilly Endowment’s Compelling Preaching Initiative. The Institute for Homiletics is one of 32 organizations that will benefit from funding made in an invitational round of grants for the Compelling Preaching Initiative, which is designed to help Christian preachers strengthen their abilities to proclaim the gospel in more engaging and effective ways.

“We are excited about the work that these organizations will do to foster and support preaching that better inspires, encourages and guides people to come to know and love God and to live out their Christian faith more fully,” said Christopher L. Coble, Lilly Endowment’s vice president for religion.  “Their programs will serve a significant number of aspiring and current preachers who are working to reach and engage increasingly diverse audiences both within and beyond congregations.”

The Compelling Preaching Initiative is part of the Endowment’s longstanding interest in supporting projects that help to nurture the religious lives of individuals and families and foster the growth and vitality of Christian congregations in the United States.

“As a Catholic university dedicated to educating young adults faithfully and excellently, we are especially attuned to the effect that good preaching and good teaching can have in drawing them more deeply into the fullness of truth,” Sanford said. “Improved preaching can inspire all Catholics, and especially the young. We hope that they can encounter Jesus and the Gospel message more deeply, which will make a lasting impact on their lives and those around them.”

Learn more about Lilly Endowment Inc. on their website.

On a sunny day in Florida during the Preaching for Encounter program’s February 2023 winter retreat, three panelists came together to present “Connecting Pulpit and Pew” for the online Southwest Liturgical Conference. The three of them embodied what it means to “connect pulpit and pew” – the panelists were Bishop Greg Kelly, auxiliary bishop of the diocese of Dallas, TX, Deacon John O’Leary, associate director of the Institute for Homiletics, and Dr. Karla Bellinger, the institute’s lay executive director. They spoke together about the importance of the liturgical homily in the context of the Eucharistic revival, which was the theme of the conference.

The Blind Spot

Bellinger began by asking, “How do we renew the Church?” In our evangelization efforts, the homily has been a blind spot. Have we given up on renewing the liturgical homily as a moment of conversion and renewal? In youth ministry, we have created big revival events. Renewal programs encourage hospitality and inviting others to Mass, a “bring them in!” approach. But lay people often wonder, “What are they going to get when they get there?”

The Convocation for Catholic Leaders in 2018 advocated for the implementation of Evangelii Gaudium in America. Yet, though there are twenty-five paragraphs about the homily in that papal document, there was not one breakout session at the convocation about the role of the homily in the renewal of the faith. Have we given up on the potential for the ordained preacher to help his people to encounter the living God through the liturgical homily? Some might say that the Sunday homily does not matter anymore. Is that the case?

The discussion opened the question, “Where is the ordinary Sunday homily within the Eucharistic revival?” The panelists discussed, is the focus of the revival to renew the overall Eucharistic celebration? Or is it devotion to the Eucharistic species of the Body and Blood of Christ? There seems to be a tug and pull, a both/and, within the revival. What is the role of preaching within that conversation?

Comments that the panelists have heard: “the homily is the hairshirt of penance that I endure to get the prize of Jesus in the Eucharist.” “I come to ‘get Jesus’; I don’t need the homily.” “The homily – who needs it?”

Unlike those in the devoted “inner circle,” five out of six people in the pews do not do anything else besides come to Mass – not Bible studies, not Catholic radio, not daily prayer or Knights of Columbus or Altar and Rosary, etc. (CARA Sacraments study). So, the homily is their only source of input into their faith. Bishop Kelly shared Colossians 3:2, that in love, we want our people to understand: “that their hearts may be encouraged as they are brought together in love, to have all the richness of fully assured understanding, for the knowledge of the mystery of God, Christ.” How are they to know if we do not preach?

The Homily as Integral to Worship

In liturgical theology, the homily is integral to worship. The panel was asked, “What does that mean for our preaching?” Bishop Kelly spoke of the two-fold table of the Lord, word and sacrament, not an either/or. but a both/and. We need both.

Bellinger shared from Verbum Domini: “Given its liturgical nature, the homily also possesses a sacramental significance: The proclamation of God’s word at the celebration entails an acknowledgment that Christ himself is present, that he speaks to us, and that he wishes to be heard” (VD 56).

She offered that the Holy Spirit believes in the liturgical homily. Thus, so should we. The Eucharistic celebration brings us together as a people. We encounter the living God through word and sacrament, give God our “yes!” and then go out into the world in which we live to share the Lord whom we have experienced. If the homily is integral to liturgy, the purpose of the homily is to help to bring people toward an encounter with God and empower them for mission. It is not an advertising moment. It is not a time to give them homework for when they go home (they are headed to the table at that moment, not home). Though teaching is a part of the homiletic moment, it is not primarily for catechesis. The purpose of the liturgical homily is to bring those assembled to an encounter with the living God.

Each of the panelists shared a witness of what it means to them to bring people to God through the liturgical homily. Deacon John shared that preaching has become an act of love for his people. Bishop Kelly offered that his mindset has changed through the Preaching for Encounter program – he now focuses on how he is heard, asking “what will inspire my people?” Dr. Karla shared that she wants her family and friends to meet Jesus, for the One who has so transformed her life – she wants that encounter for them too. The Lord is the one who touches the heart, awakens the imagination, fires the will, and fuels the intellect – we need to preach in all of these ways, for we are the Church of grace, of the mystics, the contemplatives, the saints.

At the institute, the panel shared that they are re-envisioning a distinctly Catholic homiletic for the Eucharistic revival. From Bellinger’s research, young people are looking for personal connection. A few are able to describe a life-changing experience through the liturgical homily. Many are not. The institute has recently received a $1 million grant from the Lilly Endowment to study how to reach young Catholic through the liturgical homily, and from that research, create resources to help homilists to do so.

Changing lives through the Sunday homilists – the panelists shared how we are working on that in our programming.

Then all three of the panelists had to go back to the winter retreat for forty-eight preachers, where they were in the middle of helping better preaching to happen.

On March 4, 2023, more than a hundred deacons and their wives gathered for the annual Deacon Congress for the diocese of Dallas, TX. Dr. Karla Bellinger, executive director of the Institute for Homiletics presented “Practicing and Preaching the Presence of God.”

In keeping with the institute’s focus, “renewing preachers to renew preaching,” Bellinger gave two ninety-minute presentations. The first addressed the deacon’s personal connection with God. In the second, the deacons and their wives worked with the upcoing Sunday’s readings to determine, how do we “preach Presence”? How can we put that closeness that we experience into words that inspire others?

The conundrum that Bellinger brought up arises from the disconnect between preaching Real Presence in the Eucharistic Revival and the denuminization of the current world. Numinous means a sense of the Spirit, the spiritual. De-numinous is an absense of the sense of the Spirit, a loss of the sense of the Divine as surrounding us, enfolding us, and supporting us. How do we preach Presence in the midst of a pervading emptiness? In the United Staes and western Europe, we are not speaking the same language. (In some parts of the world, the sense of the Divine is much more real.) People hearing of Real Presence have no underlying sense of Presence, therefore, what we are saying makes no sense; what difference does it make? God calls preachers to be full of the Spirit and learn to be translators from one language to the other. Bernard of Clairveaux, in Song of Songs says,

The man who is wise, therefore, will see his life as more like a reservoir than a canal. The canal simultaneously pours out what it receives. The reservoir retains the water until it is filled, then discharges the overflow without loss to itself. Today there are many in the Church who act like canals; the reservoirs are fare too rare.

Can the liturgical homily lead to a more robust understanding of the Table? Deacons are to practice the Presence of God until it oozes out of their pores, then preach the Presence of God because they cannot hold it in. God is here. God is with us.

Their hearts were burning within them as they headed to lunch together.

One of the deacons shared this experience about preaching his homily differently: “I took a step back tonight and realized…..God, through me, brought people to encounter Him today!! So COOL and so humbling!! I never had that sense or reaction before until today.”

Deacon John J. O’Leary, Associate Director of the Institute for Homiletics, is pleased to accept a grant from The Catholic Foundation to support start-up costs for the institute.

Read more…

We are beginning to recruit the next cohort of the Preaching for Encounter program. Are you a preacher who is eager to learn and grow? Do you passionately want your homilies to bring your people into an encounter with the living God? If so, please contact your bishop or whoever is in charge of ongoing formation for your diocese and ask them to get your diocese involved.

The current 2022 cohort for the Preaching for Encounter Program has nearly 50 preachers. They come from the dioceses of Dallas, TX, Victoria, TX, and Green Bay, WI.

For the 2024 cohort, we will enroll six peer learning groups with 8-10 preachers each. If you are a bishop or a vicar for clergy and you would like for your diocese to be part of this, please contact us directly. We would love to hear from you!

When we have reached the capacity of six groups, we will begin a waiting list for the next cohort.

What is the timeline for participation in the 2024 cohort?

• October, 2023, give us your “yes” to your diocese being part of the two-year program
• January, 2024, get a “yes” from 8-10 humble and willing preachers who will commit themselves to the two-year process of homiletic growth; have them fill out and send in their application; please contact us for recruiting suggestions and guidelines
• February 2024, we will interview your recommended preachers to get to know them and to determine their level of interest (admission is not automatic).
• March – May, 2024, the program kicks off with an orientation in your home diocese
• June, 2024, Summer introductory retreat for all participants
• July-August, 2024, Pre-coaching interviews
• September-October, 2024, peer learning groups begin to meet, personal coaching begins

For more information about the Preaching for Encounter Program, click here.