Catholic Women Preach

Preaching for the 32nd Sunday in Ordinary Time, Rita Houlihan, offers a reflection on integrity and gratitude :  "Can personal integrity and deep gratitude transform our grievances into prayers and actions? – that’s my question – actually it’s my challenge to myself...With today’s chaos of wars, famines, natural disasters, compounded by political factions and grievances we need to maintain fa...

Preaching for All Saints Day, Grace Salceanu offers a reflection on "Beatitude love":   "Thank God for the ways that community shows up to love us when we are suffering or simply too small in our vision. Thank God for the communion of saints who are too steeped in God’s love to be petty and small. They are blessed, drawing us into the improbable ways of the Beatitudes, urging us to choose in...

Preaching for the Thirty-first Sunday in Ordinary Time, Dr. Rachel Bundang offers a reflection on belonging:   "Jesus recognizes that Zacchaeus is also kin-- "son of Abraham"-- and wants to belong-- "for the Son of Man has come to seek and to save what was lost." Isn't that desire for kinship and belonging also our own? Let's take a step back to recognize when and how the desire surfaces...

FutureChurch hosts “a Celebration of Women’s Wisdom and Witness” to launch the first volume of Catholic Women Preach: Raising Voices, Renewing the Church (Orbis Books, 2022). We are joined by Carolyn Osiek, RSCJ , a leading authority on the role of women in the early church; Nicole Trahan, FMI , vocations director for the Marianist sisters; Virginia Saldanha , a theologian-activist in Mumbai, Indi...

Preaching for the Thirtieth Sunday in Ordinary Time, Ellie Hidalgo offers a reflection on humility, especially as we seek to become a synodal Church:   "It requires humility to become a People of God capable of encountering one another, listening, dialoguing, and able to do the hard work of communal discernment. All this synodal listening can be fruitful if we are curious and believe that eve...

Preaching for the Twenty-ninth Sunday in Ordinary Time, Jessica Kerber, aci, offers a reflection on resistant hope:    "It is interesting, then, in our Gospel reading, that when Jesus speaks about the need to be persistent in prayer, he does not pull out the example of Moses, but rather, he turns to the widow: a poor widow who has not actually seen manna falling from heaven, a poor widow...

Preaching for the 28th Sunday of Ordinary Time, Margaret Susan Thompson offers a reflection on living with a spirit of gratitude:   "Truly, as today’s Psalm proclaims, Yahweh is faithful and has done wondrous deeds. What has God done for you? There are miracles all around us. Have you said 'thank you' today?"   Margaret Susan (Peggy) Thompson is a professor of History and Political Scien...

Preaching for the Twenty-seventh Sunday in Ordinary Time, Barbara W. Eckert offers a reflection on "vision" and truth:   "The stories we read, places we walk, images we ponder, shape our vision of others’ lives. People do write the vision down, clearly.  For us to “read the vision, readily” there are faulty histories, old misconceptions, one-sided points of view in our way.  These a...

Preaching for the Twenty-sixth Sunday in Ordinary Time, Amanda W. Daloisio offers a reflection on drawing close to one another:   "On closer inspection of this story I realize that it has no description of any interactions between Lazarus and the rich man. And so I think, perhaps there were none! Perhaps the rich man never even really noticed Lazarus. His downfall, perhaps, was his complacenc...

Preaching for the Twenty-fifth Sunday in Ordinary time, Mary J. Novak encourages us to be a reflection God's justice:  "The question almost daily is how are we to act with God’s justice in a world that for some of us, is much more comfortable without it? The psalm and the second reading really do provide the essential way. First, the psalm guides us, as does Catholic Social teaching: to cente...

Preaching for the Twenty-fourth Sunday in Ordinary Time, Laurie Cassidy offers a reflection on the familiar parable of the prodigal son:   "Don’t these family dynamics feel familiar?  Aren’t these circumstances the very places where we feel lost and stuck.  It is tempting to want the parable to spell out a resolution, to offer a roadmap home, give an assurance that in the end 'we ca...

Preaching for the Twenty-third Sunday in Ordinary Time, timone davis offers a reflection on becoming "bluetooth Christians":   "My call to live in Christ is not my parent’s call, not my siblings’ call, not my friends’ call. It is MY call. And as such, I must move past what anyone else may think or say, hoist up my cross, and follow Christ."   timone davis* is a cradle Catholic who was a...

Preaching for the Twenty-second Sunday in Ordinary Time, Mary Lou Bozza offers a reflection on humility:   "Jesus is urging us, when we are invited as guests into a situation, to begin with a posture of openness to what others are bringing-- when in doubt, assume that others are more in need of special care than we are, and try to offer that care. Not because your own struggles aren’t real, b...

Preaching for the 21st Sunday in Ordinary Time, Cindy Bernardin offers a reflection on "striving":    "The thing about this gospel-striving is that it admits to our unfinishedness. It leaves room, plenty good room, for God’s healing-saving grace. Gospel-striving is not deadly, solitary, or lonely. It is alongside, among, in relationship with, God and neighbor."   Cindy Bernardin cur...

Preaching for the Solemnity of the Assumption of Mary, Kerry Robinson offers a reflection on finding hope in radical faith and community:   "It seems especially lately, collectively and individually, we know the terrible seductive temptation to despair, the feeling of hopelessness about the future, the weight of so many seemingly insurmountable challenges before us making it difficult to see...

Preaching for the 20th Sunday in Ordinary Time, Karen Seaborn offers a reflection on disturbing the peace in order to achieve true peace for all:    "Today’s gospel tells us that Jesus came to set the world on fire. And he calls us, his disciples, to continue the work he started. He never told us working toward peace and unity would be easy. Or immediate, as much as he wished it was so....

Preaching for the 19th Sunday in Ordinary Time, Jackie Minnock, B.Th, M.Phil, offers a reflection on being lamplighters to one another:    "We all have a part to play in this journey of faith – in this journey of believing in something greater than self. The process is laid out in today’s readings. We are called to be light to others, using the gifts we have been given.  We are call...

Preaching for the Eighteenth Sunday in Ordinary Time, Elizabeth Garlow invites us to the ecological conversion called for in Laudato Si':   "We will have to let go of the short-termism and instant gratification that is so pervasive. We will need to adopt a longer-term view, one that helps us understand what it might look like to live in ways that would make us good ancestors. It reminds me of...

Preaching for the 17th Sunday in Ordinary Time, Brenna Davis offers a reflection on the communal nature of the prayer Jesus teaches us:    "And so my prayer for all of us is that as we enter into the dynamics of the Lord's Prayer, that we  can be consoled, that we can trust in God's plan, and that we can be bread for one another and  lean on our neighbors when we need the suste...

Preaching for the Feast of St. Mary Magdalene, Kayla August offers a reflection on Mary's unique role as a pillar of our community and example to all:    "She was sent to make known that the one she loved…. LIVED. She wasn’t just a woman who hoped and prayed, who waited and wept, she was a woman who LOVED. And a God who is LOVE knows that a woman who loves and believes … is the way to ch...

Preaching for the Sixteenth Sunday in Ordinary Time, Susan Fleming McGurgan offers a reflection on the "strange little story" of Martha and Mary:   "What is the truth about Martha and Mary? For me, it is enough to know that their faithfulness, their commitment to love and serve, and yes, lead, is our inheritance--yours and mine, passed down from mother to daughter, between sister and sister,...

Preaching for the Fifteenth Sunday in Ordinary Time, Ann M. Garrido leads us through an imaginative retelling of the parable of the Good Samaritan and helps us reflect on being neighbors: "Is neighbor a noun or a verb? Is it someone you live near…or someone who draws near when you need them? Is neighbor something you have or something you do?”   Ann Garrido is associate professor of homiletic...

Preaching for the Fourteenth Sunday, Maria Luevano-Salazar offers a reflection on rejoicing in carrying out the mission and plan that Jesus has laid out for us:   "Now more than ever, it is crucial that we hear the calling, that we hear the plan, that we go out there and do what is asked for us to do. Today we need to be the new missionaries and disciples, the servants, and the leaders in tod...

Preaching for the Thirteenth Sunday in Ordinary Time, Krista Chinchilla-Patzke offers a reflection on focusing the work ahead:   "We, as Jesus’ disciples were, are being invited to embrace freedom and shift our attention onto something else. After saying goodbye to my family in California, it’s easy for me to think solely of everyone and everything that I’m leaving behind. It is my concentrat...

Preaching for the Solemnity of the Holy Trinity, Patricia Bruno, OP, offers a reflection inviting us into the Mystery:   "We will never understand the mystery that the poet of Proverbs explores, but if we sit in silence with the barn doors open wide, Wisdom will feed our imaginations so that our spirits will rise and be able to enter into the dance of praise and gratitude. And don’t worry. &n...