Bishop John Flesey Reflects on His Life and Hospitable Preaching

On May 21, 2025, Bishop John W. Flesey, S.T.D., D.D., Pastor Emeritus of Most Blessed Sacrament Parish in Franklin Lakes, NJ, and former Rector/Dean of Immaculate Conception Seminary School of Theology (ICSST), was interviewed by members of ICSST’s Preaching as Hospitability Formation Program as part of its Wisdom Figures of Preaching series.

Bishop Flesey and Father John Job, Pastor, cordially welcomed us to the magnificent church that was recently constructed after a fire devastated the original structure. Our interview took place next to a stained-glass window of St. Dominic, founder of the Order of Preachers and known for his outstanding preaching. 

Bishop Flesey’s call to the priesthood came as he was growing up in Jersey City, NJ, attending St. Aedan’s Parish and Grammar School and St. Peter’s Preparatory School and College (now University). An ICSST alumnus, he was ordained in 1969 and named Auxiliary Bishop of Newark in 2004. 

While still a student at St. Peter’s, he gave his first “homily,” a talk about the Blessed Virgin Mary in front of the entire student body without using notes. “Preaching was easy after that,” he joked. Bishop Flesey’s preaching style often focuses on personal connections with Scripture. As a form of Lectio Divina, he would reflect on a word from a reading, examine why it resonated with him, and use it as his homily. In a recent homily, Bishop Flesey beautifully explained how “love,” while often used for romance, can have broader meanings. “It means to care for the well-being of another,” he said. “That kind of care could be direct, as it is in family life, or it could be indirect, as we had with the building of this church.” This approach is what draws an audience to his homilies. “I am sharing ‘Oh, by the way, this is what I’ve learned from this,’ rather than thinking of ‘I’m trying to produce a homily for other people,’” he said. “I am sharing what has touched my life.” 

Bishop Flesey also emphasized the need for emotional connections in preaching, using words and stories to relate to listeners’ lives, making the message more hospitable and resonating. Bishop Flesey told us how he helped a deacon in this regard: relating to the deacon’s homily about Jesus in the boat with His disciples, Bishop Flesey encouraged the deacon to include his and his father’s boating adventures in his homily. In this way, Bishop Flesey encourages preachers to elevate their preaching to the personal level, not just to tell a story. “Teaching is meant to inform, hopefully to inspire,” he said. “Preaching is meant to inspire, hopefully to inform.” 

The Wisdom Figures of Preaching series is a digital resource of interviews with priests and deacons ordained 30 years or more, which will be used and shared in preaching courses and other formation programs. These video interviews will be made available on ICSST’s website for public viewing so that this knowledge is preserved and accessible. 

The Wisdom Figures of Preaching series is sponsored by the Preaching as Hospitality Formation Program at ICSST, directed by Father Dominic Ciriaco, D.Min. Our program seeks to form seminarians, diaconal students, and religious and lay ICSST graduate students of theology, to be compelling preachers who will offer a hospitality of the heart as they break open the Word of God. We intend to form preachers who will understand and embrace preaching as hospitality — a ministry of inviting, welcoming, sharing, and offering compassion. We also will encourage newly ordained priests and deacons and newly appointed pastors (less than five years) to begin this journey with us, and to re-imagine their preaching through the lens of Christian hospitality. 

To learn more about Wisdom Figures of Preaching, or ICSST’s Preaching as Hospitality Formation Program, please contact Alyssa Carolan at [email protected]. 

Categories: Faith and Service