On August 28, we celebrate the Solemnity of Saint Augustine with Pope Leo XIV and all of the Catholic world. The conversion of Augustine is one of the most remarkable stories in all of Christendom. His mother St. Monica wept and prayed for him for many years. What better day to reflect on the relationship of conversion, evangelization, and preaching?

The Lord Hears the Cry of the Poor

St. Teresa of Calcutta said that “The most terrible poverty is loneliness, and the feeling of being unloved.” In spite of all of its material wealth, the United States is one of the loneliest countries in the world. On her feast day, we take a look at that poverty of loneliness and how it relates to evangelization. Are we all alone or Is there Someone to call on?

St. Francis of Assisi preached with his words and his life. Because of this one man’s preaching, the faith of 13th-century Europe was revived. What can we learn from him about how to preach to our day? In this third article of our Homiletic Scholar Series, “Francis and Francis: Preaching and the Sacramentality of Creation,” Dr. Karla Bellinger unpacks the brown-robed saint’s view of the created world in conversation with Pope Francis’ Ignatian view of God in all things, especially from his 2015 encyclical Laudato Si ‘. The Good News of our faith is that God of the Universe is here, with us in all that we see and smell and touch and hear and do.

In homiletics, we can lose the mystery dimension of preaching. It is a miracle when a listener says, “You touched me today.” The Holy Spirit is the One who makes that encounter happen. But sometimes, homileticians and homilists can get ensnared in the details of how to preach and forget our zeal for the One for whom and through whom we preach. A famous theologian once said, “We must invoke the mystery of God, ponder it, live with it, learn to love it, so that, even though it remains a mystery, it becomes a reality in our life.”

See more in the Homiletic Scholar Series Vol. 2, No.1.