Preach: The Catholic Homilies Podcast

Latest Episodes:

The Vatican’s chief liturgist on why preachers need to take their homilies more seriously Feb 05, 2024

Show notes

Cardinal Roche opens the Lenten season on “Preach: The Catholic Homilies Podcast” with a heartfelt message taken from the Scripture readings for Ash Wednesday: “Come back to me with all your heart.” When asked by host Ricardo da Silva, S.J., why he chose the theme of “Welcome Home” and not to preach “in a heavier way,” to emphasize the penitential nature of the season, the cardinal, who is the most senior Vatican official to appear on the show, simply replies: “Well, because I think, really, that’s what Lent is all about.”

Cardinal Roche serves as the prefect of the Dicastery for Divine Worship and the Discipline of the Sacraments and is a former chairman of the International Commission on English in the Liturgy (ICEL). On the show, he not only imparts Lenten preaching wisdom but also shares his insights into Pope Francis’ synodal vision and emphasizes the need for preachers to meticulously prepare their homilies:

“I would say, really, take preaching—take your homily very, very seriously. And don’t be the person who looks on Saturday night to see what he has to say on Sunday morning.”

Read the full text of this week’s homily and Scripture readings.

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An update from the Preach team Jan 19, 2024

Show notes

You may have seen that we haven’t had any episodes for the last two weeks. We are taking a break after the bumper set of episodes we put together for you during the Advent and Christmas seasons. We are reviewing the results of our survey—which you can still respond to here— and planning our offering for Lent.

In the meantime, in this great week when we celebrate the extraordinary contributions of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr, to racial and social justice in the U.S. and beyond, we’re re-airing an episode with preacher Bryan Massingale, titled "Preaching the kingdom of God when justice is delayed on earth." This episode originally aired on the 15th Sunday in Ordinary Time this past July.

Bryan is a priest of the Archdiocese of Milwaukee, and presently lives and works in New York City as a professor of theology at Fordham University. He is a leader in the quest for faith-based racial and sexual justice, especially within the Catholic Church, and regularly presides and preaches at the The Parish of St. Charles Borromeo Resurrection and All Saints, the mother church for Black Catholics in the Archdiocese of New York. This year is the 40th anniversary of his priestly ordination.

Listen to Bryan’s homily for the 15th Sunday in Ordinary Time, Year A, on this week’s episode of “Preach.” After the homily, he shares with host Ricardo da Silva, S.J., a less-rehearsed reading of the well-known parable of the sower in the Gospel of Matthew.

Read the full text of this week’s homily and Scripture readings

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“Preach” is made possible through the generous support of the Compelling Preaching Initiative, a project of Lilly Endowment Inc.

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The star first leads the wise men to Jerusalem—where Old and New Testament meet—not Bethlehem Jan 01, 2024

Show notes

Preaching on the Solemnity of the Epiphany of the Lord, David Neuhaus, S.J., explores a curiosity in the story of the Wise Men’s journey from the East to the Bethlehem manger. “Why didn’t the star take them straight to Bethlehem? Why did it take them to Jerusalem?,” he asks. "I think it took them to Jerusalem, as we are always taken to Jerusalem, because we must encounter the scriptures of Israel,” he continues. “It is from the Scriptures of Israel that they will receive the precise destination to which they are going—Bethlehem.”

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David, a Jesuit priest and Scripture scholar of the Near-East province of the Jesuits, was born into Judaism in South Africa but has lived most of his life in the Holy Land. Firmly declaring his roots, he states, “I was born a Jew and remain a Jew,” he states, firmly declaring his roots. “I didn't have any faith until I became a Catholic.” Over the course of his ministry as a Jesuit, he has dedicated himself to teaching Scripture in both Israel and Palestine. Notably, from 2008 to 2017, he served as the vicar for the Hebrew-speaking Catholic community in Israel. Presently, he splits his time between Johannesburg and Jerusalem.

On this week's “Preach,” host Ricardo da Silva, S.J., delves into David’s questioning of the route the Magi took to see Jesus and its implications for the Sunday Mass readings. “There is always some intimate connection between the first reading from the Old Testament and the third reading from the Gospel,” David notes. “I would also say that it is very helpful when we realize that what we are called to do in a homily is to make Jesus alive, bring Jesus alive, and that Jesus is made alive by explicit texts about Jesus in the New Testament, and an implicit promise of Jesus in the Old Testament.

Read the full text of this week’s homily and Scripture readings.

Do you have a preacher to recommend for “Preach,” Let us know here.

Get daily Scripture reflections and support "Preach" by becoming a digital subscriber to America Magazine.

“Preach” is made possible through the generous support of the Compelling Preaching Initiative, a project of Lilly Endowment Inc.

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A Syriac Catholic priest and father in Bethlehem preaches on the Feast of the Holy Family Dec 25, 2023

Show notes

Yunan Frédéric, a Syriac Catholic priest living in Bethlehem with his Latina-American wife and their three children, preaches on the Feast of the Holy Family, even though the Syriac Church does not observe this feast in its liturgical calendar. For the past two years, he has served as the pastor of the Syriac Catholic community in Bethlehem; a small, largely refugee, Arab-speaking group of about 100 people.

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Yunan, shares his approach to preaching and contemplates the situation of war in which he lives. "It's like walking with a friend and talking together," he says. “I am very much listening as well. I am looking at the faces of the people. I’m trying to create a communion as we are one body during the Mass, and the homily is part of that communion.” As the conversation draws to an end, Yunan shares a prayer he has spontaneously found himself praying since war broke out, “O God, forgive us.”

“When I was saying ‘us,’ I was including everyone. I was putting myself with the one who kills, and I was taking the one who killed into myself as well, as one family was human, one human family. God forgive us.”

Read the full text of this week’s homily and Scripture readings.

Do you have a preacher to recommend for Preach? Let us know here.

Get daily Scripture reflections and support "Preach" by becoming a digital subscriber to America Magazine.

“Preach” is made possible through the generous support of the Compelling Preaching Initiative, a project of Lilly Endowment Inc.

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Keeping Christmas joy alive in our preaching—even amid war, violence and poverty Dec 18, 2023

Show notes

The anticipated joy of Christmas unfolds against a backdrop of pain and violence this year.

“I think one of the most important things in these extremely troubled times is that we do have the lights, both metaphorically and physically,” says Barbara Reid, O.P. “Our most important gift and our most important approach, not only to the advent and Christmas season, but to our lives overall, is never to let hope dim.”

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On the Christmas episode of “Preach,” Sister Barbara Reid, President of the Catholic Theological Union in Chicago and Carroll Stuhlmueller, C.P. Distinguished Professor of New Testament Studies at the C.T.U, preaches on the readings for Christmas Mass during the Day.

In conversation with Ricardo after the homily, Barbara reflects on how she maintains Christmas joy in her preaching without shying away from the grim realities of the world, and encourages listeners to read Scripture commentaries from “perspectives that are postcolonial, Latino/a, Black Catholic, Asian, and Asian American.”

Read the full text of this week’s homily and Scripture readings.

Do you have a preacher to recommend for Preach? Let us know here.

Get daily Scripture reflections and support "Preach" by becoming a digital subscriber to America Magazine.

“Preach” is made possible through the generous support of the Compelling Preaching Initiative, a project of Lilly Endowment Inc.

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Preaching about joy starts with paying attention to life’s difficulties Dec 11, 2023

Show notes

This week on 'Preach,' the script is flipped: Ricardo da Silva, S.J., the regular host, becomes the guest preacher, and Maggi Van Dorn, a usual producer, takes the mic as the host. Maggi and Ricardo, who work together extensively on “Preach,” “Hark! The stories behind our favorite Christmas carols” and “Inside the Vatican,” compare how preachers and podcasters alike craft stories to captivate their audience

On this Gaudete Sunday, Ricardo invites listeners to identify where they have experienced joy, even as he admits that we live in a world where joy is hard to come by.

In his homily, Ricardo tells a story by Pedro Arrupe, S.J., who was the 28th Superior General of the Society of Jesus from 1965 to 1983. The story is about Arrupe's visit to a Brazilian favela, and it helps Ricardo explore the connection between joy and self-gift.

“Joy cannot be manufactured. It's not something that we can create for ourselves,” explains Ricardo. “It’s something that sort of happens in a moment, in a flash, and then we catch ourselves in a joyful state.”

Read the full text of this week’s homily and Scripture readings.

Do you have a preacher to recommend for Preach? Let us know here.

Get daily Scripture reflections and support "Preach" by becoming a digital subscriber to America Magazine.

“Preach” is made possible through the generous support of the Compelling Preaching Initiative, a project of Lilly Endowment Inc.

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Preaching in Native American communities responding to generational trauma Dec 04, 2023

Show notes

Despite his advanced studies in Scripture, it wasn’t until Victor Cancino, S.J., became the resident pastor at St. Ignatius Mission on the Flathead Indian Reservation in Western Montana that he properly grasped the Bible’s deep connections with Native American spirituality and practices. “The Bible is from a tribal world with a spirituality that is as old as the people that I’m living with,” Victor says. “We completely forget that and we think of this Roman-Greco society that looks like us, but the Bible looks a lot like tribal people.”

On “Preach,” Victor delivers a homily for the Second Sunday of Advent, Year B, focusing on the image of the desert presented in the first reading from Isaiah. In the conversation that follows the homily, host Ricardo da Silva, S.J., and Victor explore how the preacher might respond to generational trauma in marginalized communities, such as the people he works with on the reservation.

Read the full text of this week’s homily and Scripture readings.

Do you have a preacher to recommend for Preach? Let us know here.

Get daily Scripture reflections and support "Preach" by becoming a digital subscriber to America Magazine.

“Preach” is made possible through the generous support of the Compelling Preaching Initiative, a project of Lilly Endowment Inc.

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A preacher's guide to Advent Nov 27, 2023

Show notes

“How do we really enter into a season like Advent when the world around us is already celebrating Christmas?” This is the question host Ricardo da Silva, S.J., sets before his guests, Scripture scholars Barbara Reid, O.P., and Victor Cancino, S.J., at the start of this episode, which breaks the usual mold of the podcast.

Instead of the usual show where we hear a homily for a given Sunday and then talk to a guest preacher, we’ve invited Sister Reid and Father Cancino to share ways into the Scriptures for Advent and offer us avenues for preaching in each of the four weeks of this time. What do preachers need to keep in mind as we move into a new liturgical year, from Year A to Year B, and season, from Ordinary Time to Advent? What are the key themes that preachers can draw inspiration from for their homilies?

Listen to “Preach” this week to hear what wisdom Barbara and Victor have to share about the Scriptures and the art of preaching to retell the Scripture.

Read the full text of this week’s homily and Scripture readings.

Do you have a preacher to recommend for Preach? Let us know here.

Get daily Scripture reflections and support "Preach" by becoming a digital subscriber to America Magazine.

“Preach” is made possible through the generous support of the Compelling Preaching Initiative, a project of Lilly Endowment Inc.

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A reminder for preachers: ‘Words can hurt; words can also heal’ Nov 20, 2023

Show notes

The Scripture readings for the Solemnity of our Lord Jesus Christ, King of the Universe, invite us to interpret the Scriptures through a lens that is perhaps less common for this celebration. Agbonkhianmeghe Orobator, S.J, tries to imagine ways in which the readings for the last Sunday of the liturgical calendar, “can be perceived less as a hierarchical, patriarchal or monarchical depiction of who God is in Christ through the Spirit, and more about how God relates to us; in humility, in care, in tenderness.”

Father Orobator, a Jesuit of the North-West Africa Province, is an internationally acclaimed theologian and a convert to Catholicism from traditional African religion. This summer, he began his tenure as dean at the Jesuit School of Theology at Santa Clara University.

On this week’s “Preach,” Orobator shares with host Ricardo da Silva, S.J., how thinking of the Gospels as stories can subvert hierarchical, monarchical, and even patriarchal readings of the Scriptures.

Read the full text of this week’s homily and Scripture readings.

Do you have a preacher to recommend for Preach? Let us know here.

Get daily Scripture reflections and support "Preach" by becoming a digital subscriber to America Magazine.

“Preach” is made possible through the generous support of the Compelling Preaching Initiative, a project of Lilly Endowment Inc.

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At funerals, preach for the living, not the dead Nov 20, 2023

Show notes

This November, as we remember our beloved dead and our liturgy begins to contemplate the end times, the stark reality of war is even more pronounced. In times, like these, “sometimes, the best thing you can do,” says Bruce Botha, S.J., “is acknowledge someone else’s pain and say, ‘I can’t imagine how you’re feeling.’”

Father Botha, a priest of the Southern Africa province of the Jesuits, has been in parish ministry for the last 15 years. He serves as the pastor of Holy Trinity Catholic Church and chaplain for two universities in Johannesburg, South Africa. Previously, he worked at St. Martin de Porres, a Jesuit-run parish in Soweto, “a historic township,“ he says, which was “the epicenter of a lot of the anti-apartheid struggle.” The parish is a stone’s throw from the world-famous Vilakazi Street, which he reminds, has “the homes of two Nobel Peace Prize Laureates in it: Desmond Tutu and Nelson Mandela.”

On “Preach” this week, host Ricardo da Silva, S.J., engages Bruce on the challenges of preaching in fearful, uncertain times of COVID and war, and at intimate moments of personal grief, like funerals.

Read the full text of this week’s homily and Scripture readings.

Do you have a preacher to recommend for Preach? Let us know here.

Get daily Scripture reflections and support "Preach" by becoming a digital subscriber to America Magazine.

“Preach” is made possible through the generous support of the Compelling Preaching Initiative, a project of Lilly Endowment Inc.

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices