Sermon School

New archdiocesan priests relive the ‘hot seat’ seminary class


Jonah Beckham rolled on his heels. As a seminarian, he knew his first Sunday Mass practice homily front to back, yet that didn’t make this any easier. He could feel every eyeball in the room fixed on him, the other priests-to-be listening to his every word.

He stifled another restless movement and kept preaching.

“Distractions are all around us,” he said. “I was distracted writing this homily because of the Sooners game.”
He probably looped back to those lines twice more, meandering like a country road. At least this was a “practice” homily, right?

Finally, it was over. 

Time for the professor to assess his presentation: “Yeah, but you’re going to have the people in the pews looking at you and saying, if you would’ve turned the game off, you could’ve given a better homily.”

That’s the goal of homiletics class, where seminarians try out their preaching skills before not only a professor, but pews full of other seminarians who are called to offer their best – or worst? – feedback. The reviews were honest, and often biting.

Grinning in his office chair, Father Jonah Beckham – newly ordained for the Archdiocese of Oklahoma City in June and parochial vicar for Saint Francis of Assisi Catholic Church in Oklahoma City – chuckled at the recollection from his fall 2023 semester studying homiletics at Mount Saint Mary’s Seminary. 
“Brutal,” he said of the professor’s comeback, “but also accurate.”


Founded in 1808, Mount Saint Mary’s Seminary in Emmitsburg, Maryland, is a far cry from Oklahoma City, more than 1,200 miles away. People can reach it driving up Saint Anthony Road. The sight of the seminary building is a treat in the fall, the gray gabled roof and teal copper dome haloed with crimson and ochre-colored trees.

History-makers have emerged here: Mount Saint Mary’s University rumors that Babe Ruth got his big break on Echo Field, where students still play. Father Jonah calls Mount Saint Mary’s Seminary “home of the saints.” Archbishop Daniel M. Buechlein of the Archdiocese of Indianapolis notes that Servant of God Simon Bruté – friends with fellow Emmitsburg resident Saint Elizabeth Ann Seton – taught at Mount Saint Mary’s in the 1800s. 

The Oklahoma-bred Blessed Stanley Rother, a priest martyred in Guatemala in 1981, was an alumnus, whose relic was recently gifted to Pope Leo XIV.

For the fall 2023 semester, Archdiocese of Oklahoma City seminarians Jonah Beckham and John Grim followed in Father Rother’s footsteps, literally. Both men landed at Mount Saint Mary’s with their transitional deaconate ordination one year away. Beckham’s room was actually Blessed Stanley Rother’s old digs, as evidenced by the plaque commemorating the years of Rother’s residency: 1961-1962.

“I cried when I found out,” Father Jonah confessed.

Father Grim, ordained alongside him this June 2025, remembers the school’s atmosphere as “incredibly welcoming.” He and Beckham were already friends prior to the journey to Mount Saint Mary’s. Father Jonah is social and exuberant, a former woodworker who likes British murder mystery shows. Father Grim’s name is false advertising: this laid-back fisherman is not grim at all. 

As for the other seminarians, they viewed the newcomers affectionately as “Rother’s boys.”


The classroom – like the year-long, required homiletics class – was not built for comfort. The room was windowless, for starters. This class not only put you on the “hot seat,” it left you literally hot. The two AC units wheezing for life didn’t do much to regulate temperature.

Father Grim had one key strategy. 

Position yourself as close to the front as possible. That way, the clatter of the AC won’t overpower the professor, and the “antics” playing out behind you will stay out of sight, out of mind.

Still, although the class pushes seminarians out of their comfort zone, Father Grim saw the general attitude as very positive. Through preaching, “we were putting into practice bringing forth the knowledge that we had been consuming all this time and actually starting to teach it.”

During that fall 2023 semester, Beckham and Grim were enrolled in the first stage of homiletics, “Models of Preaching.” The seminarians gained insight on the mechanics and the spiritual depth of preaching.

“You see through the lives of the saints, but you also embrace that there’s no cookie-cutter way to preach,” Father Jonah said, his tone charged with enthusiasm. “God’s Word is coming through the priest in a way the people of God can understand. It comes out in a human way, in our unique way.

“That’s a beautiful thing.”

Both alumni are unanimous in their praise for their professor, scripture scholar Father Pablo Gadenz. Father Grim has never forgotten one of the professor’s tips: smile.

“I remember very clearly him telling us the importance of smiling before you give your homily.”

Father Grim smiled himself at the memory. “Ever after that point, I noticed when Father Gadenz preached at chapel, he always made a point of just putting on this big smile. That stuck with me because I could see him doing it.”

At the semester’s close, seminarians presented two Sunday Mass practice homilies, along with one for daily Mass, receiving verbal evaluations from peers and a recording of their homily from the professor.

“There’s nothing worse than watching yourself public speaking – it’s painful,” said Father Grim, chuckling.
After returning from break, it was time for round two.


Beckham and Grim shifted in the pews of the Chapel of the Immaculate Conception, staring up at the brilliant, star-covered dome as they waited. 

During the spring 2024 semester, labeled “Homiletics Practicum,” each student now produced more than 10 practice homilies for numerous hypothetical situations: Christmas Day, baptism, funeral. Maintaining respectful silence in the campus chapel, they watched as a classmate stepped forward to present a wedding homily.

This was when the agony began, both for presenter and listeners.

The poor soul giving the homily, Father Grim explained, is “imagining a wedding couple there and talking to thin air, and it feels weird because you’ve got this audience watching you act out preaching to somebody who’s not there.”

On the flip side, the listeners were sometimes fighting with every bone in their body not to burst out laughing in church. 

“There were some really creative, hard-to-pronounce names that guys came up with” for the bride and groom characters, Father Grim said. “You’re trying to keep some semblance of reverence, but you would be there watching your brother give this homily and you’d be trying not to die!”

But the almost theatrical wedding homilies highlighted an important point for Father Grim: practice homilies were far from the real deal.

“To be honest,” he said, “it really wasn’t until receiving the grace of priestly ordination that preaching really became alive for me.”

Before priestly ordination one year later, however, the two seminarians had to present for their class final what would become an actual homily: the first words they would preach after diaconate ordination in about one month’s time, June 1, 2024.

It was “terrifying,” Father Grim said. “I started working on mine weeks before it was due.” Even so, he added, “There was definitely a much greater sense of confidence by the end of that second semester.”
Father Jonah agreed.

“I remember I was grateful for that practice homily because the weekend I was ordained a deacon, I gave that homily five times,” he said. “Believe me, you can only say a joke in a homily so many times before it stops being funny to you!”


Before creating a Sunday Mass homily at Saint Joseph Catholic Church in Norman, Father Grim closed his eyes and petitioned the Holy Spirit.

“Let me preach your word and nothing but your word. Lord, open the hearts of your people, that they receive your word and only your word, and nothing of me.”

Now months into his role as parochial vicar at Saint Joseph, things are getting more comfortable for Father Grim.

Mass begins in the main church, sunlight glowing lime-green, royal blue, and bright yellow, reflected from the stained-glass windows.

The Gospel Proclamation rolls around. Father Grim finishes the reading and scans the pews, taking in the expectant faces. 

He doesn’t forget to smile.

Emily Chaffins is a freelance writer for the Sooner Catholic.

Photo: (Above) Fr. John Grim. Photos provided.

Fr. Jonah Beckham after his Mass of Thanksgiving on June 29 at St. John the Baptist Catholic Church in Edmond. After the closing hymn in the back of the church, the seminarians and priests present applauded for him. Photo Kasey Holt.