By Jay Sorgi • Posted September 23, 2025

The eternal fruits of the Catholic Mass come in the linkage of two liturgies, that of Eucharist and of Word. It’s the latter that will be the focus of a special event next month.

“It’s the integration of Word and Eucharist that makes the Mass. The Word informs the Eucharist, and the Eucharist embodies the Word,” said Oblate Father Thomas Dailey, the director of the Catholic Preaching Institute at St. Charles Borromeo Seminary which will be hosting its first-ever Festival of the Word.

The free, walk-in event happens on Saturday, Oct. 4 from noon until 6 p.m. at the seminary, 1400 Evans Road in Ambler. Auxiliary Bishop Keith J. Chylinski will offer an anticipated Sunday Mass that evening as part of the event. No registration is required.

Father Dailey is inviting not only those who preach the Word – priests and deacons — but also those who read, hear and experience it to come to the day-long exploration of compelling preaching.

“A greater appreciation of that connection with powerful or compelling preaching would enhance the Sunday experience of all Catholics,” said Father Dailey.

“Our plan is not simply to address or provide something for those who do the preaching, but also for those who hear it, which is every Catholic, every Sunday.”

Father Dailey explains how historically, many Catholics made the Eucharist their sole focus during the celebration of the Mass. But in doing so, they may have missed the importance of what comes in the first half of the Mass.

“The saying itself was that Catholics endure the homily to get what they really came for, the Eucharist. That’s just centuries of highlighting the celebration of the Eucharist. I think that lack of appreciation, if you will, for the Word of God is just part of our experience,” he said.

The Festival of the Word will attempt “to counter that and to promote as well the Word of God as essential to, and integral to, our worship,” he added.

Utilizing the basic principles of communication, the message proclaimed in the Liturgy of the Word concerns not just what the speaker says, but what people hear, according to Father Dailey, who teaches the craft of preaching, known as homiletics, to seminarians.

His hope is that the festival will help people not only to appreciate not the Sunday readings including the Gospel, but also how they are preached upon and how God can use a well-preached homily to affect our lives.

“The congregation has a part to play in compelling preaching, in the thriving of the Word of God. We’re trying to highlight this aspect of our liturgical experience, both for the preachers, but also for anybody who’s interested in seeing how the Word of God can impact life,” said Father Dailey.

“That means the assembled faithful in the pews are not simply meant to passively ingest the Word.”

In-person registration for the Festival of the Word precedes an introduction by Father Dailey, followed by a competitive preaching program with masters of divinity students from Philadelphia-area seminaries, both Catholic and non-Catholic.

“We’ve invited five of the larger Christian seminaries in the region to send a representative who would actually preach,” said Father Dailey.

“We’re going to narrow it down to the top three, a way to experience different forms and different approaches to preaching, just to see how we all do it and to celebrate the variety of preaching that there is.”

Four concurrent seminars will then offer attendees an opportunity to understand the Word through their choice of diverse ways that it speaks to them:

• • A scholarly Word with Professor David Bosworth of the Catholic University of America;
  • A proclaimed Word with Father Benjamin Roberts, the president of the Catholic Association of Teachers of Homiletics;
  • An artistic Word with Dan Tarrant, the Bucks County-based founder and director of Personally Catholic Films; and
  • A digital Word with Dean Andrew McGowan from the Berkeley Divinity School at Yale University.

“We designed it with these multiple approaches or realms in which the Word can play a role,” said Father Dailey.

Holy Cross Father Michael Connors of the University of Notre Dame, the former director of the university’s Marten Program in Homiletics and Liturgics, will offer the keynote presentation.

“He’s going to speak about what it is we do when we’re preaching, or what is it we hear when we’re preaching. What is this thing that we all experience, that we all maybe take for granted, that we all encounter every week?

What’s the goal of it?” said Father Dailey.

This program follows and supports the Hearing the Word series the seminary has held over the past year. It was designed to help priests, deacons and those in the pews each Sunday to form a greater connection and understanding of the Word we hear at Mass and its connection to our lives.

“It was especially pastors who emphasized this point, that not only understanding the Word, the Bible, is critical, but understanding how it relates to life today. They saw that as the chief need of preachers nowadays,” said Father Dailey.

“The mentoring program is really a systematic coaching and feedback mechanism, and (with) this festival, we just want to celebrate the continuing power of the Word of God.”