Say “Holy Spirit” and most picture a dove or gentle fire. But Anthony SooHoo, S.J., turns to a wilder Celtic image: a honking goose in flight—untamed and impossible to ignore. It’s how he preaches Pentecost: the Spirit who startles us into new life and calls the church to fly together—rather than just waddle along. For the Solemnity of Pentecost, Year C, Anthony draws on the physics of flight and a Kierkegaardian parable about ducks. In conversation with host Ricardo da Silva, S.J., he explores imagination in preaching and the art of going off-script—especially when the Spirit honks.

Guest: Anthony SooHoo, S.J., professor of ancient Near Eastern studies at the Pontifical Biblical Institute in Rome and pastoral staff member at Caravita, an international English-language Catholic community.

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Seventeen years ago, Ricardo da Silva, the host of this podcast, heard a homily that has stayed with him ever since. It was preached by his novice master, British Jesuit priest Paul Nicholson, and began with a simple but unforgettable image drawn from medieval art: Jesus’ feet dangling in the air, his body swallowed by clouds.

Preaching for the Solemnity of the Ascension of the Lord, Year A, Paul returns to that homily, reflecting on how visual art and imagination can lead those who receive a homily beyond scriptural explanation or catechesis and into prayer. Together, he and Ricardo explore how this feast—so often understood as a moment of departure—can also reveal God’s nearness and how that insight might shape preaching at funerals and help preachers speak to grief, absence and hope.

Guest: Paul Nicholson, S.J., director of the Jesuit Institute in the United Kingdom.

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Shortly after Cardinal Robert Prevost was elected Pope Leo XIV, Bill Gabriel, O.S.A., received an unexpected email from a student at Malvern Prep in Pennsylvania. The student asked, “Is this your boy?” alongside a photo of the new pope. Bill replied, “I wouldn’t say he’s my boy, but he is our brother,” referencing their shared Augustinian bond. The student responded, “Well, I guess that makes him my brother too.” 

Preaching for the Sixth Sunday of Easter, Year C, Bill finds resonance in his homily between the risen Christ’s parting words—“Peace be with you”—and Pope Leo XIV’s call for “an unarmed and disarming peace.”

Guest: Bill Gabriel, O.S.A., Head of Mission and Ministry at Malvern Prep.

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“Every time I proclaim one of Francis’ homilies, my heart is filled with joy,” says Greg Heille, O.P. “It’s heart speaking to heart.” Recorded just hours before Cardinal Robert Prevost was elected Pope Leo XIV—while the cardinals were still in conclave—Greg joins “Preach” host Ricardo da Silva, S.J., to reflect on the homiletic legacy of Pope Francis: always on message, spoken from the heart, simple without losing depth. He proclaims a homily by Francis for the Fifth Sunday of Easter, Year C, in 2022, where those qualities shine through. Grounded in a single verse from John’s Gospel—As I have loved you, so you also should love one another—the homily weaves together themes of holiness, simplicity and love in action.

Guest: Greg Heille, Dominican friar, preaching professor at Aquinas Institute of Theology and author of The Preaching of Pope Francis.

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At 3 a.m. in the lambing shed on his farm in the Irish midlands, John Connell speaks gently to a ewe in labor. “The wave of willful force doesn’t work,” he says. “It’s about calm and serene and speaking gently, and that’s generally how the thing gets accomplished, certainly on our farm.” An award-winning author, investigative journalist, and organic farmer, John has spent over a decade working with sheep. “They’re very caring, look after each other, and are more intelligent than we think,” he says. “But they can be vulnerable. If they get sick, they don’t have as big of a fight in them as, say, a cow would.” And yet, John has come to admire their quiet bravery. “I think if people would spend a little time getting to know sheep, they'd realize there’s more to them than they might first comprehend.”

For the Fourth Sunday of Easter in Year C, John reflects on the Gospel’s message of Jesus as a shepherd, who knows his sheep intimately and cares for them with great love. We invited him to Preach as part of our Culture of Encounter series, inspired by Pope Francis’ call to engage with people today—the real people we hear about in the Scriptures—rather than simply engaging with ideas. “He was the pope that spoke to me most directly,” John says. “And I feel lucky that I got to become aware of his work while learning about farming.”

Ricardo asks John what he hears Jesus saying to him when he reads, “My sheep hear my voice.” For John, Jesus is saying: “I totally understand who you are, and I want you in this flock.” That intimacy shapes his writing—and how he invites preachers to write: with heart, clarity, and “one true sentence” at a time.

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When fishermen set sail, Deacon Marlowe Sabater says, they place one foot on the deck—and the other, unknowingly, “in the watery grave, because you just won’t know what’s gonna happen out there.” Born and raised in Metro Manila, Marlowe now ministers to seafarers and port workers—many of them migrant workers from his native Philippines—through the Diocese of Honolulu’s Apostleship of the Sea ministry. Facing unpredictable storms and countless dangers at sea, every safe return to shore, he says, is “an everyday miracle.”

Marlowe is our guest on “Preach” for the Third Sunday of Easter. In his homily, he reflects on the Gospel story of the risen Christ meeting his disciples on the shore and connects it to the faith of those who work and live at sea today. In conversation with host Ricardo da Silva, S.J., Marlowe draws even further from his ministry—meeting workers at the docks to pray with them, to minister to them and to share the trust that sustains us all amid life’s storms: “When Jesus is in our boat, he has the capability of calming the storm of our lives.”

When he’s not at the ambo, on the docks or behind a desk, Marlowe finds his anchor in family life with his wife, Maggie, and their two sons. He credits Maggie as his “editor in chief,” offering the honest feedback every preacher needs. “Sometimes she’ll read my homily and say, ‘I don’t feel it,’” he says. “And it’s back to the drawing board—and she’s always right.”

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The emboldened disciples in Acts 5:12-16 perform signs and wonders of the risen Christ to a crowd gathered at Solomon’s portico in Jerusalem. Witnessing the good news of the Resurrection for the first time, astonished onlookers bring the sick and wounded for the apostles to heal through the power of God. “I just hope people feel some desire to get together with other people in their community and do a little Bible study on the Acts of the Apostles,” says Casey Stanton, co-director of Discerning Deacons, a project helping the Church listen more deeply as it discerns the role of women in the diaconate. “The church has given us this gift of a text that offers us a way to recover something that feels lost right now: a common life together.”

Joining host Ricardo da Silva, S.J., on this episode of “Preach” ahead of the Second Sunday of Easter, Casey connects the first reading to the current situation facing many immigrant and migrant Christians in the U.S., who live in fear of deportation and detention. “What will our testimony be in this generation in our time?” she asks. “We are called to be in community, especially with and as those who are called criminals. Those who are deemed unworthy, those who think they do not have a right to speak, those whose land is being stolen, whose waters are polluted, whose lives are under siege, who struggle for life and dignity.”

Casey Stanton has spent over a decade in ministry working on social concerns in parish settings, as well as engaging with broader faith-based networks focused on justice and inclusion. She lives in Durham with her husband Felipe and their three children—Micaela, Teddy and Oscar. Her work is rooted in Pope Francis’ call to a synodal Church—a Church that listens, walks together, and follows the lead of the Holy Spirit. 

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In John’s account of the Resurrection, “the other disciple” enters the empty tomb, sees, and believes. Why is this detail included? “I think the hope here is that we not focus on some historical moment that happened, but rather an understanding of what the risen life is here and now,” says Greg, founder and president of Homeboy Industries, the largest gang intervention, rehabilitation and reentry program in the world.“ The risen life is meaningful now, or it’s not meaningful at all.”

In this Easter Sunday episode of Preach, Greg shares with host Ricardo da Silva, S.J., how we might recognize and receive God’s “tender glance” not only at Easter but every day. “How do we notice the notice of God?” he asks. “And then become that notice of God in the world?” For Greg, the Resurrection isn’t only about what happened to Jesus more than 2,000 years ago. “We’re all going to die, and none of us will live forever, but we really can live in the forever,” he says. “The risen Lord is here and now—in the struggle, in the loss, in the grieving, in the delighting, in people sharing their lives with each other. You want to be able to say, ‘I’m right here, and I’m right now, and I’m breathing in the spirit that delights in my being, and now I’m breathing that out into the world. ‘Cause the world could use it.’”

Greg is also the bestselling author Tattoos on the Heart: The Power of Boundless Compassion and Barking to the Choir: The Power of Radical Kinship and his newest book, Cherished Belonging, the Healing Power of Love in Divided Times. In 2024, he received the nation’s highest civilian honor: the Presidential Medal of Freedom.

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Luke’s account of Jesus’ Passion offers a distinctive perspective: “The ordinary people are not only not complicit in the death of Jesus, but they repent of what has been done to him,” says Luke Timothy Johnson, a leading scholar of Luke-Acts and Woodruff Professor Emeritus of New Testament and Christian Origins at Emory University. Unlike the other Gospels, Luke paints a vivid image of repentance in Jesus’ final moments: a great crowd of people turning their backs on the city after his death, beating their breasts—an action that Professor Johnson says is significant because it is the “classic body language of repentance” used throughout the Scriptures.

“Luke thereby sets up the conversion of the people in the story of Acts, where thousands of faithful Jews hear the word of the resurrection and join the Jesus movement in Acts,” Professor Johnson argues. Recognizing this, he suggests, offers us “a much more positive view of the people of Israel.”

Returning to “Preach” for the second time this Lent, Professor Johnson joins host Ricardo da Silva, S.J., to discuss the Passion narratives in both Luke and John—accounts that we will hear during the principal liturgies of Holy Week, on Palm Sunday of the Lord’s Passion, Year C, and on Good Friday. With liturgies requiring long stretches of attention and involvement from the congregation, the preacher’s role is, as Johnson observes, “fundamentally, to get out of the way.” He adds that, on these days, “preaching should be very succinct, if practiced at all.”

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“This passage is about sin, but I want to ask about whose sin, right?” asks Amirah Orozco, a doctoral student in systematic theology at the University of Notre Dame. Raised on the U.S.-Mexico border between El Paso, Texas, and Juarez, Chihuahua, Amirah reflects on the woman caught in adultery(Jn 8:1-11), whom Jesus stops from being stoned to death by a group of men who want to punish her, and test Jesus. “The woman is concerned about her sin,” Amirah reflects. “What if we made it also about the sin of the men who want to kill her?”

On this episode of “Preach” for the Fifth Sunday of Lent, Year C, Amirah joins host Ricardo da Silva, S.J., to offer a woman’s perspective on the adulterous woman that draws insight from liberation theologies. “Although personal sin is real, it is clear to us now that structures are set up in such a way that social sin becomes possible for us to talk about.” Amirah says. “The God of great mercy reminds us that if social sin is possible, so too is social mercy and forgiveness.” 

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