Catholic Women Preach

Preaching for the Solemnity of the Ascension, Stephanie Boccuzzi offers a reflection on ascending - rising up - to the realities of today:  

"This Solemnity asks us to Rise! Get up! Be empowered to be a light to the world! And, to do so, we ask ourselves, 'What does ascending mean after these past two years of global, national, and individual suffering?' 'How can we rise up to meet the challenges of today?' 'Do we situate our gaze on a future of joy and restoration, or do we live in the pain and worry of the past?'"   

Stephanie Boccuzzi currently teaches Theology at Xavier High School in Manhattan. A graduate of The University of Scranton, Stephanie studied International Business and Spanish with a concentration in Latin American Studies. Following graduation, she lived in Quito, Ecuador and served with The Center for Working Families. The experience in Quito led her to pursue a Master of Divinity degree at the Jesuit School of Theology of Santa Clara University. Her areas of interest include women in Scripture, racial justice in the Catholic Church and beyond, curriculum design in ethics, and preaching and spiritual accompaniment. Stephanie recently accepted the role of Mission Leader at Trinity Health of New England, where she will serve St. Mary’s hospital in Waterbury and the senior living communities of Connecticut and Massachusetts.   

Visit www.catholicwomenpreach.org/preaching/05292022 to learn more about Stephanie, to read her preaching text, and for more preaching from Catholic women.

Preaching for the Sixth Sunday of Easter, M. Patricia Ball, M.S.R.N. offers a reflection on finding peace in our turbulent lives by actively inviting God into them:  

"We can pray unceasingly and live the gospel if we find sustenance in remembering that we are engulfed in God’s loving embrace. In that embrace we can find the peace he gives and that we so desire. It is good that God is here".  

M. Patricia Ball, M.S.R.N. has been a practicing psychiatric nurse since 1983. Her current professional work is in the area of research into treatments for Schizophrenia. For the past 45 years she has been an active member of St. Vincent de Paul Parish in Baltimore, an intentional community committed to being inclusive and active in issues of social justice and the work of Vatican II. She currently serves as a lector, liturgy planner, Eucharistic minister, and on the Committee on Church Reform. As part of her work for church reform, Patricia joined Discerning Deacons and has been active with them since its inception. She also serves as a hospice volunteer.  

Visit www.catholicwomenpreach.org/preaching/05222022 to learn more about Patricia, to read her preaching text, and for more preaching from Catholic women.

Preaching for the Fifth Sunday of Easter, Mariann McCorkle invites us to consider how we can embody Christ's command to "love":  

"Who accompanied you and made an impact on your spiritual life.  Join me in giving thanks for that accompaniment. How then do we embody that love for ourselves and others?"  

Mariann McCorkle is Co-Director of the Ignatian Legacy Fellows Program, Loyola University Chicago.  She founded the program in 2018 with John Fontana, Co-Director, to promote a community of learning in a pilgrimage over one year in one’s retirement. Mariann holds a Bachelors and a Masters Degree in English and has taught literature, poetry and spirituality for years.  

Visit www.catholicwomenpreach.org/preaching/05152022 to learn more about Mariann, to read her text, and for more preaching from Catholic women.

Preaching for the Fourth Sunday of Easter, Sr. Jane Nesmith, SBS, offers a reflection on listening for the voice of the Good Shepherd in our world and lives today:   

"Our very lives depend on our choosing the option of following the Good Shepherd, and to declare with our lips and our lives that he is indeed the Way, the Truth and the Life. This one and only Good Shepherd calls out to us in our heartbreak and our loneliness.  He calls out to us in our frustration and our guilt. This Good Shepherd brings His love to our lovelessness.  This Good Shepherd brings His power to our powerlessness. This Good Shepherd stands by His promise,  'I give you life eternal and nothing in all creation will ever be able to snatch you out of my hand.'"  

Sister Jane Nesmith is a native of Philadelphia, PA, and a 58-year member of the Congregation of the Sisters of the Blessed Sacrament.  She holds a Master’s Degree in Education with a concentration in Religious Studies and a Certification in Youth Ministry from Cardinal Stritch University in Milwaukee, WI. Sister’s previous mission sites included: Rayne, Lake Charles, and New Orleans, LA; Seattle, WA; Evansville, IN; and Jamaica, West Indies. She taught youth of all grade levels, coordinated youth programs, served as a Director of Campus Ministry, Pastoral Associate, Pastoral Life Coordinator, and co-founded a pilot youth ministry program at Xavier University.  She has also served as a founding and board member of the National Black Sisters’ Conference.  

Visit www.catholicwomenpreach.org/preaching/05082022 to learn more about Sister Jane, to read her preaching text, and for more preaching from Catholic women.

Preaching for the Third Sunday of Easter, Kelly Meraw, reflects on Jesus' final  post-resurrection appearance and what it means for our Church today:  

"In his threefold affirmation of love for Jesus, Peter is guided to the most integral mark of an intimate lover of Christ: limitless love and mercy. Peter must be reminded of his need for Christ’s mercy in order to ultimately be the conduit of it. Teaching Peter that ‘to love is to forgive’ is our Lord’s last blueprint entrusted to a Church who is asked to spill divine mercy over a world in desperate need of it. A Church who is asked to confront their own finite love and follow the movement of the Holy Spirit into a radical, unbounded love. An agape love. A love like Christ showed Peter, and a love like Christ has shown us."  

Kelly Meraw is the Director of Liturgy, Music, and Pastoral Care for St. John - St. Paul Collaborative (a thriving Catholic Collaborative of two parishes in Wellesley, Massachusetts). In her parishes she leads bible studies, organizes faith sharing circles and social justice initiatives, leads communion, wake and committal services, offers adult faith enrichment programming and shepherds bereavement ministries.   

Visit www.catholicwomenpreach.org/preaching/05012022 to learn more about Kelly, to view her video or read her preaching text, and for more preaching from Catholic women.

Maureen Glavin, RSCJ preaches for the Second Sunday of Easter, offering a reflection on seeking and believing:  

"On this topic of deep knowing or mature belief, I often think of the founder of my congregation, Saint Madeleine Sophie Barat.  She wrote regularly about the interior life or interior spirit. Her own contemplative practice provided her with the kind of ongoing experiences which allowed her to know what it tasted like, felt like, to be in union with, communion with, in relationship with, touched by and touching, the living Christ.  So, what about us?"  

A native of upstate New York, Sr. Maureen Glavin has been a member of the Society of the Sacred Heart for 34 years.  Having recently completed a term serving on the Society’s United States–Canada Province Provincial Team, she has said ‘yes’ to an invitation to live, learn and minister in Indonesia beginning in August of 2022. In addition to teaching math and science in her early years in the Society, Sister Glavin served as Assistant Principal of Our Lady of Guadalupe School in Houston, Texas, and as Director of the Junior High School at Carrollton School of the Sacred Heart in Miami, Florida. Prior to being named to the Provincial Team, she served for 13 years as Head of School at the Academy of the Sacred Heart in St. Charles, Missouri.   

Visit www.catholicwomenpreach.org/preaching/04242022 to learn more about Sr. Maureen, to read her preaching text, and for more preaching from Catholic women.

Preaching for Easter, Kimberly Lymore encourages us to find resurrection in our own lives:   

"Today is a reminder that we are a resurrection people who have the power to resurrect those things in our lives that have been buried. Take off your burial clothes and put on your garment of praise. Scripture tells us that God has turned our mourning into dancing. Today is the day we resurrect our dreams, our faith, our peace, whatever it is we have buried." 

Kimberly Lymore is a member of The Faith Community of St. Sabina, where she was appointed the full-time Pastoral Associate by the Rev. Michael L. Pfleger on September 1, 2000. She is currently Convener of the Black Catholic Theological Symposium and Director of the Augustus Tolton Pastoral Ministry Program at Catholic Theological Union (CTU). Dr. Lymore received her Masters of Divinity with a concentration in Word  from CTU and she received her Doctor of Ministry from McCormick Theological Union.    

Visit www.catholicwomenpreach.org/preaching/04172022 to learn more about Kimberly, to read her text, and for more preaching from Catholic women.

Lifting up the experience, faith, and wisdom of her ancestors and elders, Valerie D. Lewis-Mosley, OPA preaches for Good Friday:   

"Whenever I would ask my grandparents and great-grandparents about their experiences in the Jim Crow south of segregation and the terror of the Ku Klux Klan, their response was 'A burning cross has no power over the Cross of Calvary.' It was their abiding faith and trust in the Blood poured out that day on Calvary that allowed my ancestors and elders the confidence to believe and trust that their help cometh from the Lord."  

Valerie D. Lewis-Mosley, OPA is the retired Director of Religious Education at the Church of Christ the King - Jersey City, New Jersey, a historical Black Catholic Parish an Apostolate for Evangelization in the African American community. She now serves in various capacities across the nation as a mentor to youth and adults evangelist, retreat leader and revivalist and public speaker, life coach and Spiritual Director. Catechesis to children and youth and women’s spirituality and empowerment are a major component of her ministry as a pastoral associate. She is an Adjunct Professor in the Department of Theology at Caldwell University, Caldwell, New Jersey, and Xavier University of Louisiana Institute for Black Catholic Studies. Valerie is a member of the Black Catholic Theological Symposium. She holds multiple advanced degrees in nursing, law, and theology, including a Doctor of Ministry from Drew Theological School in Madison, NJ.   

Visit www.catholicwomenpreach.org/preaching/04152022 to learn more about Valerie, to read her preaching text, and for more preaching from Catholic women.

Remembering the lunch counter sit-ins of the Civil Rights Movement, Dr. Kim Harris preaches for Holy Thursday, offering a reflection on creating a welcome table:  

"Are we looking and bending down, to wash the feet of a neighbor? Or even allowing our own feet to be washed in the ritual…? While feeling other than, feeling above or even feeling disdain for those who are in deep need. Unhoused, underfed, unremembered? Do we see, as we look at our table not only who is there, but who is not there? Who is not invited? Who is invited but cannot gain access?"  

Kim R. Harris is Assistant Professor of African American Thought and Practice in the Department of Theological Studies at Loyola Marymount University, Los Angeles. She holds a Ph.D. in Worship and the Arts from Union Theological Seminary, New York City. Dr. Harris is a member of the Black Catholic Theological Symposium and the North American Academy of Liturgy. While pursuing her Ph.D., she composed Welcome Table: A Mass of Spirituals. Welcome Table is a featured complete Mass setting in the second edition of the Black Catholic hymnal, Lead Me Guide Me and the Gather Hymnal 4th Edition (GIA Publications Inc.). Her current research concerns Black Catholic liturgy in a time of changing parish demographics and consolidations, as well as the need to diversify available liturgical resources for worship.  

Visit www.catholicwomenpreach.org/preaching/04142022 to learn more about Dr. Harris, to watch her preaching video or read her preaching text, and for more preaching from Catholic women.

Preaching for Palm Sunday, Cecilia González-Andrieu, Ph.D., offers a reflection on "stubborn hope":  

"And so – we are called out of ourselves to take this road with Jesus – to take up the gift of the reign of God we are called to bring, while knowing that there will be murderous opposition to that gift.  As we step out of our comfort into the starkness of what is real, we transcend fear to see clearly that we must continue on to Jerusalem because that is where change happens.  This Holy Week we sit with Jesus in the underground cistern, where he was likely kept overnight as he awaited trial and try to fathom how it is that he continued to love and work for love in spite of so much evidence that he should just give up.  Humanity must have broken his heart.  They were hopeless, mired in their own self-preservation, and yet, there were those women, his mother, the Magdalene, the others. Fearless they pushed on, wanting him to see them, to know their nearness.  Like in so many of the stories of his Jewish community, they enacted God’s reign, the few who made visible God’s love, showing that humanity was not without hope."  

Cecilia González-Andrieu, Ph.D., is professor of Theology and Theological Aesthetics at Loyola Marymount University.  Her work explores systematic theology, theological aesthetics, and political theology from the particularity of the Latinx experience.  She is the author of Bridge to Wonder: Art as a Gospel of Beauty and co-editor of Teaching Global Theologies: Power and Praxis.  A scholar-activist Dr. González-Andrieu speaks and marches with those who thirst for the liberative power of theological thought in a number of interlaced areas of inquiry.   

Visit www.catholicwomenpreach.org/preaching/04102022 to learn more about Cecilia, to read her preaching text, and for more preaching from Catholic women.