Southern Nebraska Register
Two members of the Catholic Diocese of Lincoln provided training for new deacons in the Catholic Diocese of El Paso in Texas.
The two-hour communications-centered training took place via Zoom Nov. 22.
Deacon Matthew Hecker, director of the Permanent Diaconate Program in the Lincoln Diocese, and Dennis Kellogg, director of communications for the diocese, led the session titled “Delivering a convincing message.”
The Diocese of El Paso has a total of 63 permanent deacons. The training sessions for the 18 new deacons ordained in January focused on homiletics. The deacons’ wives also participate in the training.
Deacon Hecker emphasized to the group the importance prayer plays in writing a homily.
“Preaching always begins with prayer,” Deacon Hecker said. “The homily is not my message to God’s people. It is God’s message to his people. I’m simply the messenger, but I can only receive the message in prayer and contemplation.”
Deacon Hecker, who in addition to overseeing the permanent diaconate program is also the first ordained permanent deacon in the Catholic Diocese of Lincoln, told the El Paso deacons their role is “to make present the servant heart of Christ to his people.”
“Deacons are called to powerfully conform their very lives to the humble, servant heart of Christ, ‘who humbled himself to enter into our humanity.’”
He reminded the group that the message in their homilies must come out of their relationship with Christ.
“The majority of permanent deacons are not nearly as well trained in theology and scripture as priests,” he said. “Thus, our preaching has to come from the heart of a deep relationship with Jesus Christ, formed by years of frequent prayer, spiritual reading, daily Mass and walking this journey with Christ.”
Deacon Hecker led the deacons through an exercise in which they developed a homily that would be relatable to the community they serve. When he asked them for a recommendation, several immediately mentioned the current immigration crisis facing their region on the southern border, including respect for the human dignity of the migrants.
Kellogg focused his presentation on the basics of communicating messages effectively. He introduced the foundational communications model of a sender delivering a message to a receiver, and how that relates to the homilies being delivered by priests and deacons.
“That model also includes ‘noise’ that can interrupt the ability of the one giving the homily to communicate God’s message to those in the pews,” Kellogg said. “That noise can be audible distractions, like a poor sound system in the church, or it can be mental distractions, such as the stresses or anxieties those in the pews may be focused on instead of the homily. The goal is to overcome those obstacles and get the message to those who need it, which is all of us.”
Kellogg also shared preaching examples from the greatest communicator of all time, Jesus Christ, citing scriptural examples such as the Road to Emmaus and the Sermon on the Mount among others as examples of how Jesus taught with clarity and authority.
“Jesus also used stories to communicate his message, but they were always stories with a purpose that led the listener back to his main message,” he said. “Whether it was the mercy we see in the story of the Prodigal Son, or what it means to be a true neighbor as illustrated in the parable of the Good Samaritan, it was storytelling with a clear purpose.”
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Courtesy photos
The invitation to provide the training came from Deacon Jesus Cardenas of the Diocese of El Paso. Deacon Cardenas leads the diaconate program in El Paso and was part of a cohort with Kellogg for the past three years through the McGrath Institute for Church Life at the University of Notre Dame. The clergy and lay diocesan employees participating in the nationwide “Compelling Preaching Initiative” focused on research and discussions on effective homiletics.
“The McGrath Institute program led to the creation of our own program, ‘Prepare & Proclaim: Enriching our Mass Experience,’” Kellogg said. “One of the goals has been to emphasize good homilies are the responsibility of both the priests/deacons and the parishioners, who should come prepared to Mass and be fertile ground to receive God’s message being communicated in the homily. That’s something I wanted to share with the El Paso deacons as well.”
The “Prepare & Proclaim” program, which includes a page with Mass resources on the Lincoln Diocese website, came from a series of listening sessions with priests, seminarians, parishioners, and high school and college students. Kellogg talked about some of the perspectives on homilies that he heard in those sessions with the deacons as well. That included comments shared across most or all groups for homilies to focus on one main point, for priests to challenge parishioners, for those in the pews to pray for their priests, and for priests to encourage and give the faithful hope in their homilies.
This was the sixth training session this year for the new deacons in the Diocese of El Paso. The others have focused on “Foundations on homiletics,” “Sources for homilies,” “Exegesis and/or typology,” “Shaping the message to make sense to us,” and “Applying Scripture to our everyday life.”
