Fire Starters: Igniting the Holy in the Weekday Homily

Though daily Mass is held most frequently, resources for daily homilies can be in short supply. In this book, Bishop Sklba offers a rich collection of ideas — fire starters — for preparing brief, spiritually nourishing homilies for daily Eucharist. Like building a campfire, where one ignites the logs with more easily flammable paper, these fire starters" are intended to provide the spark for weekday homilies. God's Spirit provides the flame.

Each day, the biblical citations and summary phrases for the reading and the gospel plus the refrain from the psalm are provided. After each citation, Bishop Sklba offers a series of meaningful insights from his expertise as a Scripture scholar, prayerful study of Scripture, and many years of preaching and pastoral experience. These brief entries provide knowledge and inspiration that will stimulate personal prayer and spark homily possibilities for the preacher every day.

Fire Starters will support anyone privileged to be called to leadership at weekday celebrations of the Eucharist to prepare for the important ministry of preaching.

Bishop Richard J. Sklba (1935-2024), served as auxiliary bishop of Milwaukee for over thirty years. He is a well-known biblical scholar, completing the licentiate in Sacred Scripture from the Pontifical Biblical Institute in Rome. He was a member and former president of the Catholic Biblical Association of America. He served on many committees of the US Conference of Catholic Bishops, chairing its subcommittee on the Review of Scripture Translations from 1991 to 2001. In 1988, he received the Catholic Theological Society of America’s John Courtney Murray Award for achievement in theology. He is the author of Fire Starters: Igniting the Holy in the Weekday Homily (Liturgical Press, 2013).