Preacher’s Sketchbook:

Each week, a Dominican member of the Province of St. Joseph’s 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.

St. Jerome, Homily I

If wisdom is the tree of life, Wisdom itself indeed is Christ…. Because this tree has been planted in the garden of Eden, we have all been planted there together with him.

St. Gregory of Nyssa, On the Origin of Man

“God took of the dust of the earth and fashioned man.” In this world I have discovered the two affirmations that man is nothing and that man is great. If you consider his nature alone, he is nothing and has no value; but if you regard the honor with which he has been treated, man is something great.

St. John Chrysostom, Homilies on Romans

Adam is a type of Christ in that just as those who descended from him inherited death, even though they had not eaten of the fruit of the tree. so also those who are descended from Christ inherit his righteousness, even though they did not produce it themselves.

St. Ambrose, Paradise

The Devil aimed to circumvent Adam by means of the woman. He did not accost the man who had in in his presence received the heavenly command. He accosted her who had learned of it from her husband and who had not received from God the command which was to be observed. There is no statement that God spoke to the woman. We know that he spoke to Adam. Hence we must conclude that the command was communicated through Adam to the woman.

St. Augustine, Tractates on the Gospel of John

When a man is born, he is already born with death.

St. Peter Chrysologus, Sermons

The fact that we fast during Lent is not of human invention. The authority is divine and mystical and not taken for granted.

Origen, Fragment 63

The manna itself is a word. This is made clear from the reply Moses made to the question of the children of Israel, when they said to one another, “What is that?” What then did Moses say? “This is the bread which the Lord has given you to eat. This is the word which the Lord has commanded.”

St. Gregory the Great, Forty Gospel Homilies

When the Lord was tempted by the devil, he answered him with the commands of sacred Scripture. By the Word that he was, he could have easily plunged his tempter into the bass. But he did not reveal the power of his might, but he only brought forth the precepts of Scripture…. He overcame his enemy not by destroying him but by suffering him for a while.