Easter Fire: Fire Starters for the Easter Weekday Homily

AVAILABLE EARLY MARCH

Paperback, 208pp., 7 x 10

Richard J. Sklba and Joseph Juknialis
Widely embraced by homilists and those interested in reflcting more deeply on the daily
Lectionary readings, Bishop Richard Sklba’s Fire Starters: Igniting the Holy in the Weekday
Homily has served as a practical resource for preparing engaging weekday homilies for
Ordinary Time. After much anticipation, Bishop Sklba and coauthor Fr. Joseph Juknialis
now offer Easter Fire, a welcome companion to support anyone called to preach at Easter
weekday Masses.

Easter Fire provides the biblical citations and summary phrases for the reading and the
gospel plus the refrain from the psalm each day. After each citation, the authors offer a series
of meaningful insights based on Scripture scholarship, their own prayerful reflction on
the texts, and years of preaching and pastoral experience. These brief “bullet point” entries
provide nuggets of knowledge and inspiration that will stimulate personal prayer and spark
homily possibilities for the preacher every day.
Easter Fire will ignite sparks that can be enflmed by God’s Spirit, to not only enrich the
spiritual journey but to add light and warmth for the preparation of weekday homilies during
the Easter season.

Bishop Richard J. Sklba 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 Pontifial Biblical Institute in Rome. He is a member and former
president of the Catholic Biblical Association of America. He has 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).

Rev. Joseph Juknialis is a priest of the Archdiocese of Milwaukee. Presently he is director of the Saint Francis Seminary
College Program as well as director of the Preaching Institute at Saint Francis Seminary. Ordained in 1969, he has spent the
greater portion of this time in parish ministry and continues to minister at Saints Peter and Paul Parish in Milwaukee. Over
the years he has written and published a number of collections of stories for use in the classroom and in prayer settings. In
addition he writes a monthly reflction on the Sunday Scriptures for the Catholic Herald, the Catholic newspaper for the
Archdiocese of Milwaukee.