Returning from Bishop Robert Barron’s conference held this week on preaching, several priests said the experience was a grace-filled time to focus on one of the most important roles with which they are tasked.

The inaugural Word on Fire National Conference for Priests was held Aug. 20-22 in Huntington Beach, Calif., fewer than 20 miles southwest of Orange. Sponsored by the Napa Institute and led by Bishop Barron, an auxiliary bishop of Los Angeles, the gathering of more than 300 priests focused on homiletics.

“It was very helpful,” Fr. Matthew Magee of the Archdiocese of Denver said, to hear Bishop Barron “talk about [how] the first office, the primary office we have as priests, is to preach.”

Fr. Magee told CNA it was wonderful to have re-instilled the “importance of the gift of preaching … and to open up our hearts to experience what that is from a different perspective, and then to be able to collaborate with other priests about what that means for our ministry.”

The conference was meant to help priests guide parishioners through the Bible, to preach Christ-centered homilies, to present the gospel as a yes to life and to love, and to use beauty in preaching.

Along with Bishop Barron, another presenter was Dana Gioia, the California Poet Laureate and a former chairman of the National Endowment for the Arts.

Fr. Joe McLagan, also of the Denver archdiocese, said Gioia “gave a talk on beauty which was quite good … he used several, about five, different pieces of literature to coalesce into the fact that beauty needs to be brought back into the world,” and how the words of preaching can do that.”

Full story at Catholic News Agency.