Each week, a Dominican member of the Provincial Preaching Advisory board prepares this Preacher’s Sketchbook in anticipation of the upcoming Sunday Mass. The idea of the Preacher’s Sketchbook is to take quotations from the authority of the Church–the Pope, the Fathers of the Church, documents of the Councils, the saints–that can help spark ideas for the Sunday homily. Just as an artist’s sketchbook preserves ideas for later elaboration, so we hope the Preacher’s Sketchbook will provide some ideas for homiletical elaboration.

Sketchbook

Pope Benedict XVI, Deus Caritas Est

True, no one has ever seen God as he is. And yet God is not totally invisible to us; he does not remain completely inaccessible… In the love-story recounted by the Bible, [Jesus] comes towards us, he seeks to win our hearts, all the way to the Last Supper, to the piercing of his heart on the Cross, to his appearances after the Resurrection and to the great deeds by which, through the activity of the Apostles, he guided the nascent Church along its path.

Pope Benedict XVI, Deus Caritas Est

He has loved us first and he continues to do so; we too, then, can respond with love. God does not demand of us a feeling which we ourselves are incapable of producing. He loves us, he makes us see and experience his love, and since he has “loved us first”, love can also blossom as a response within us.

Justin Martyr, Dialogue with Trypho

Thus it is that we have believed through the baptism of repentance and knowledge of God, which was instituted for the sins of the people of God, as Isaiah testifies, and we recognize that that same baptism which he announced, and which alone can purify penitents, is the water of life. The wells which you have dug for yourselves are broken and useless.

St. Justin Martyr, Dialogue with Trypho

Now Christ, the first-born of every creature, founded a new race which is regenerated by him through water and faith and wood, which held the mystery of the cross (just as the wood saved Noah and his family, when it held them safely on the water).

Bl. Pope John Paul II, Redemptoris Mater

For every Christian, for every human being, Mary is the one who first “believed,” and precisely with her faith as Spouse and Mother she wishes to act upon all those who entrust themselves to her as her children. And it is well known that the more her children persevere and progress in this attitude, the nearer Mary leads them to the “unsearchable riches of Christ” (Eph. 3:8). And to the same degree they recognize more and more clearly the dignity of man in all its fullness and the definitive meaning of his vocation, for “Christ…fully reveals man to man himself.”