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:

“When someone has the experience of a great love in his life, this is a moment of ‘redemption’ which gives a new meaning to his life…. The human being needs unconditional love…. If this absolute love exists, with its absolute certainty, then—only then—is man ‘redeemed,’ whatever should happen to him in his particular circumstances. This is what it means to say: Jesus Christ has ‘redeemed’ us. Through him we have become certain of God…. Man’s great, true hope which holds firm in spite of all disappointments can only be God—God who has loved us and who continues to love us ‘to the end.”… If we are in relation with him who does not die, who is Life itself and Love itself, then we are in life. Then we ‘live.”

Pope Benedict XVI:

“Only the great certitude of hope that my own life and history in general despite all failures are held firm by the indestructible power of Love, and that this gives them their meaning and importance, only this kind of hope can then give the courage to act and to persevere.”

Pope Benedict XVI:

“Thomas Aquinas, as is well known, defined truth as the adequation of the intellect to reality…. The perception of the truth is a process which brings man into conformity with being. It is a becoming one of the ‘I’ and the world, it is consonance, it is being gifted and purified. To the extent that men allow themselves to be guided and cleansed by the truth, they find the way not only to their true selves but also to the human ‘you.’ Truth, in fact, is the medium in which men make contact, whereas it is the absence of truth which closes them off from one another…. If the truth purifies man from egotism and from the illusion of absolute autonomy, if it makes him obedient and gives him the courage to be humble, it thereby also teaches him to see through producibility as a parody of freedom and to unmask undisciplined chatter as a parody of dialogue. It is victorious over the tendency to mistake the absence of all ties for freedom. Thus, the truth is fruitful precisely by being loved for its own sake.”

Saint Thomas Aquinas:

“Truth and goodness include one another. The truth is something good; otherwise it would not be worth desiring; and the good is true; otherwise it would not be intelligible.”

Blessed Guerric of Igny:

“Jesus laid bare the whole strength of his love for his friends before pouring himself out like water for his enemies. Handing over to them the Sacrament of his Body and Blood, he instituted the celebration of the Eucharist. It is hard to say which was the more wonderful, his power or his love, in devising the new means of remaining with them to console them for his departure. In spite of the withdrawal of his bodily presence, he would remain not only with them but in them, by virtue of this Sacrament.”

Blessed John Henry Newman:

“We have no love for Him who alone lasts. We love those things which do not last, but come to an end. Things being thus, he whom we ought to love has determined to win us back to him. With this object He has come into his own world, in the form of one of us men. And in that human form He open his arms and woos us to return to him, our Maker.”

Monsignor Luigi Giussani:

“What is truth must be repeatedly looked at in the face.”

Resources

Readings

Seventh Sunday of Easter or the Ascension of the Lord

Sunday Preacher’s Resource

Seventh Sunday of Easter (Year B) The Solemnity of the Ascension of the Lord (Year C)

Additional Preaching Resources

• The Holy See: The Easter Season
• Fr. Thomas Rosica (Salt and Light Media)
• The Torch
• The King of Ages
• Fr. Francis Martin Website
• Biblius Clerus, a resource of the Congregation for the Clergy
• The Catena Aurea of St. Thomas Aquinas, O.P., for the Gospels of Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John