Fr. Dylan Schrader to preach homilies on the Creed this fall
Father Dylan Schrader’s parishioners asked for more opportunities to learn about their faith, so he’ll give them what they asked for.
Every Sunday, from the pulpit, throughout the fall.
He’ll offer a series of homilies titled “A Tour of the Creed” at each Sunday and Saturday Vigil Mass through December 2023 in St. Joseph Church in Westphalia and St. Anthony of Padua Church in Folk.
“These homilies will be catechetical, they’ll be doctrinal, they’ll have specific content,” said Fr. Schrader, pastor of the Westphalia and Folk parishes.
Deacon James Haaf, who assists him in both parishes, will help.
The Creed — specifically, the Nicene Creed — is the centuries-old summation of the essential teachings of the Church that Catholics profess at Mass each Sunday and holyday.
It begins with “I believe in one God” and concludes with “and the life of the world to come.”
“I’m excited about it,” he said. “Many adult Catholics would admit they don’t know their faith as well as they should or as well as they’d like to. It’s hard to get them to come to things during the week. But we do have them here on Sunday.”
The priest or deacon who gives the homily at Mass typically preaches on that day’s Scripture readings, “which is appropriate and excellent,” said Fr. Schrader.
“But it can also be helpful, from time to time, for adult Catholics to hear the major themes of the Catholic faith in an organized way,” he said.
The General Instruction on the Roman Missal, which prescribes how the Mass is to be celebrated, also gives priests and deacons the option to preach on the Order of Mass or on the prayers of the Mass — “which includes the Creed,” he said.
Furthermore, the late Pope Benedict XVI, who led the Church from 2005 to 2013, in his 2007 Apostolic Exhortation “Sacramentum caritatis,” encouraged preachers to remember the catechetical dimension for the homily for Mass.
“He specifically asked priests to preach about the four pillars of the Catechism (of the Catholic Church), four major aspects of our Catholic faith,” Fr. Schrader noted.
Those four pillars are: the Creed; the Sacred Liturgy, with pride of place given to the sacraments; the Christian way of life, beginning with the Ten Commandments; and Christian prayer.
Fr. Schrader holds a doctorate in systematic theology from The Catholic University of America.
Several years ago, he preached a series of homilies during Lent on the seven capital vices, focusing on one or two in each homily.
During Lent another year, his homilies gave an overview of the Old Testament, “so that when we got to Palm Sunday, we had arrived at the New Testament and led into Holy Week that way,” he said.
The idea for this series came from town-hall meetings hosted by St. Joseph and St. Anthony of Padua parishes as part of the diocese’s Shaping Our Future Together pastoral planning process.
“In those meetings, people very clearly spoke of the need for more adult faith formation,” said Fr. Schrader.
He does offer periodic catechetical series for adults in the parishes, “but not as many people come to those,” he said. “The time we have most people present is really for Sunday Mass.”
He consulted with the parish pastoral councils of both parishes in seeking a topic and assembling an outline for this fall preaching series.
“Both councils thought it would be good for me to try giving a systematic overview of the Catholic faith through the lens of the Creed,” he said.
“Systematic,” as in systemic theology, is the study of how all the aspects of the Catholic faith fit and work together.
“Systematic theology is basically a big-picture, orderly way of looking at the faith,” he said. “It’s the study from different perspectives of how the truths of the faith fit together and harmonize.”
Specifically, this series will continue building each week on how the mysteries expressed in the Creed fit together.
Sunday Masses at St. Joseph Church in Westphalia are livestreamed and archived at facebook.com/St.JosephChurchWestphaliaMO.
