Books
Many of the Notre Dame preaching conference workshops and talks can be found in book form here:
Remembering Why We Preach: A Retreat to Renew Your Spirit and Skill
2022: by Karla J. Bellinger and Michael E. Connors, CSC
Remembering Why We Preach is a retreat that will help you revive your creative energy and spiritual focus. Karla Bellinger—executive director of the Institute for Homiletics at the University of Dallas—and Fr. Michael Connors, CSC—director of the John S. Marten Program in Homiletics and Liturgics at the University of Notre Dame—lead you through an eight-part process of spiritual renewal and skill development that will nourish and enrich you and your preaching for years to come. Whether you are recently ordained or have been preaching for decades, you will explore the spiritual, pastoral, and communal aspects of preaching, which lies at the heart of the Church’s work of making disciples.
Preaching as Spiritual Leadership: Guiding the Faithful as Mystic and Mystagogue
2021: edited by Michael Connors, CSC
In this unique resource, Fr. Michael E. Connors gathers and expertly guides the collective wisdom of experienced preachers and homilists to provide a unique resource that examines the preacher’s unique role as shepherd and a spiritual leader. The chapters will investigate these dual roles according to the roots of the Catholic spiritual tradition and provide practical advice for priests, deacons, seminarians in homiletics classes or preaching classes, retreat leaders, RCIA catechists—all who preach. To be a shepherd and spiritual leader, the preacher must be in some sense a mystic, who is filled with the Lord’s gracious presence, a presence to be shared with others. Homilists are a sacramental people, they must also be a mystagogues: ministers who can both lead the community’s ritual celebrations, and help the People of God to plunge into the liturgy with lively faith, to touch the holy realities behind them.
Effective Preaching: Bringing People into an Encounter with God
2019: edited by Michael Connors, CSC
The 2017 conference, "To Set the Earth on Fire: Effective Catholic Preaching" focused on the practical side of Catholic preaching. This book is a compilation of the talks from that conference, with topics that range from storytelling to preaching with youth, from developing careful homiletic form to growing attentive to the spiritual needs of listeners. This rich resource will nourish hungry preachers over and over again with its down-to-earth embrace of the goal to bring hearers more deeply into a relationship with the living God.
Preaching for Discipleship: Preparing Homilies for Christian Initiation
2018: monograph by Michael E. Connors, CSC
The homily is a primary way that pastors and deacons can communicate how the whole parish community forms the catechumens. Many parishioners are not aware of their role in the Christian initiation process. In Preaching for Discipleship: Preparing Homilies for Christian Initiation, Michael E. Connors, CSC, provides homilists and catechists with the tools to evangelize not only the catechumens present, but also to capture the imagination of the parish community so that they too realize their own role in the Christian initiation process
What We Have Seen and Heard: Fostering Baptismal Witness in the World
2017: edited by Michael Connors, C.S.C.
One of the chief challenges of the Second Vatican Council was to reclaim the meaning of baptism, especially as the foundation of service and mission in the world. Fifty years after the close of that watershed gathering, nineteen distinguished religious leaders and scholars reexamine that challenge and its implications for preaching and ministry today. This book reinvigorates an important conversation.
To All the World: Preaching and the New Evangelization
2016: edited by Michael Connors, C.S.C.
Pope Francis's vision of the ministry of preaching offers a renewed emphasis on what it means to preach the Word of God in such a way that it transforms lives and communities, and inspires hope. In To All the World, contributions from a variety of expert voices reflect on the importance of liturgical preaching today.
To All the World combines contemporary scholarship with pastoral practicality in one volume by well-known practitioners in the ministry of preaching including Timothy Radcliffe, OP, Honora Werner, OP, Paul Turner, Jeremy Driscoll, OSB, Karla J. Bellinger, and Cardinal Donald Wuerl. It will serve as a perfect companion to the United States Bishops' document, Preaching the Mystery of Faith: The Sunday Homily, and will be of interest to all those who are called to be evangelists of the Word to all the world.
We Preach Christ Crucified
2013: edited by Michael Connors, C.S.C.
In June of 2012, three hundred and sixty people gathered at the University of Notre Dame for the first Marten conference on Catholic preaching. With contributions by a wide variety of theologians and practitioners, We Preach Christ Crucified gathers the fruits of those days spent reflecting on the importance of the preaching ministry. Its release was timely, given the U.S. bishops' promulgation of a new document on preaching, Preaching the Mystery of Faith: The Sunday Homily (January, 2013), and the renewed emphasis on preaching by both Pope Benedict XVI and Pope Francis.
The challenges facing Christian preachers in our time are many and formidable ones. The authors in this collection take a fresh look at the resources at hand, the contemporary context, and the preacher. The result is a refreshing and hopeful reconsideration of an ancient ministry.