What makes a great Catholic homily, and what goes into the art of delivering it well?
“Preach” is a new weekly podcast from America Media that features a diverse cast of the finest Catholic preachers. Each week, preachers open up their hearts and minds, sharing their spiritual lives, approaches to interpreting scripture and techniques for preparing the best homilies.
On each episode, listeners will meet Catholic preachers, learn about their communities and hear their Sunday homilies, delivered with a podcast audience in mind. In the second part of the show, preachers will unpack the making of their homily with the show’s host, Ricardo da Silva, S.J., to offer a privileged peek into their lives as ministers of God’s Word, to enable all preachers to keep preaching the Good News.
Read the homilies featured on the podcast and get daily Scripture reflections from America Media by becoming a subscriber: www.americamagazine.org/subscribe
“Preach” is made possible through a generous grant from Lilly Endowment, Inc, as a contribution to its Compelling Preaching Initiative, funding the development of preachers across the United States.
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A homily is a public speech, so it only makes sense to write it in public, says Scott VanDerveer, who mostly writes his homilies sitting at a long shared table in a coffee shop. “I love looking up at whoever’s in line at the cash register at that moment and thinking, ‘Would this guy, or would this woman care about what I’m saying at all; would this speak to their life at all?’” he says. “Or would they say, ‘Ugh, that’s so churchy?’” The Rev. VanDerveer, a priest of the Diocese of Albany and the ...
