Monsignor Vincent Bommarito - credit: UNICO-St. Louis

Last week, the Aquinas Institute of Theology named the Monsignor Vincent Bommarito, pastor of St. Ambrose Parish in the Hill as the recipient of its Great Preacher Award for 2009.

The award, given annually by the Dominican seminary, promotes “compelling and imaginative preaching that powerfully engages hearers with the Word of God,” Aquinas president, the Rev. Richard Peddicord, said in a release.

In the same release, Bommarito said, “Next to praying the words of the institution narrative, proclaiming the Living Word is critical in exciting the hearts of all to embrace the Lord - and each day graced by the Lord gives rise to hope and thanksgiving.”

The Great Preacher Award will be presented to Bommarito on Thursday, October 29, 2009, at Rose of the Hill, 2300 Edwards, in St. Louis.

I searched for an image of a pulpit, and found this photo of a cliff in Norway called The Pulpit. I like it.

“It’s a writer’s job to tell the truth,” John Updike once said in an interview.

I think one might say the same thing about preaching.  I have been spending a good deal of time and energy recently learning how to preach.  My experiences in the pulpit, as well as in a homiletics class I recently completed at the Aquinas Institute, have encouraged me to see preaching as more than something I do.  Instead, I am learning to see it as part of who I am.  I suppose it’s similar to the distinction between a career and a vocation.  And in the process I’m coming to believe that the most important part of preaching is witness–that is, telling the truth as I have experienced it.

There is an interesting tension in…