Inviting through Preaching: Monsignor Robert F. Coleman Reflects on Hospitality

Familiar sights and sounds greeted Monsignor Robert F. Coleman, J.C.D., as he returned to Immaculate Conception Seminary School of Theology (ICSST) on October 21, 2025, to reflect on his many years of preaching and ministry. The former Rector/Dean of ICSST was interviewed as part of the Wisdom Figures of Preaching series of the Preaching as Hospitality Program, a key initiative of ICSST. 

 A native of West Orange, New Jersey, Monsignor Coleman earned his B.A. from Seton Hall University in 1974 and was ordained in 1978. He earned a licentiate in canon law from the Pontifical Gregorian University in Rome in 1984 and returned in 1986 for doctoral studies in canon law. He served as Vice Rector of ICSST from 1996 to 2000 and as Rector/Dean from 2000 to 2012. Following his time at ICSST, Monsignor served as Seton Hall’s Associate Vice Provost and Minister to the Priest Community until his retirement in 2020. 

Monsignor Coleman’s approach to hospitable preaching centers on drawing people into the Word of God. As he reflects on the Scriptures throughout the week, he focuses on what the Word is saying and how he can convey it to his audience on Sunday. “I’m trying to understand not only what the Lord is saying in the Word, but how am I going to then, with His grace, impart a ‘welcoming Word.’” The key, he explained, is figuring out how to preach to himself: “I always tell myself, I’m going to preach to myself,” he said. “If I can come up with something that I think is going to invite me in, then hopefully there will be others who are going to be invited in.” 

Such hospitality also may be seen in the way that Monsignor approached his role as Rector/Dean, encouraging seminarians to be welcoming and hospitable, so as to set the tone for their future priestly ministries. “I didn’t want anyone to come into the Seminary building and not see a community that would immediately say, ‘welcome to the Seminary,’” he explained. In this way, Monsignor noted, “Their future priesthood was one that was going to be filled with love and with real welcoming to people.”  

Monsignor encourages preachers to look at preaching as a prayerful act to take in the Word of God as in prayer and then share it with others. “It’s God’s Word spoken to us, and what better way for us to begin if we’re going to impart something about God’s Word,” he emphasized. “The whole concept of prayer is the real foundation of our preaching.” The Holy Spirit is key.  To communicate the Good News effectively, it is crucial to invite and welcome the Holy Spirit to work and speak through you. “Be the vessel, the vehicle by which the Holy Spirit is going to really be able to empower people,” Monsignor explained. “Somebody out there needs this just as much as I need this, so how can I then be the vehicle for that very thing?” 

Being a hospitable preacher means being inviting and drawing people into a community through shared belief in the Word of God. “That’s the wonderful thing about worship,” he said. “Everybody gets together, and we’re all different…and yet, here we are standing all together shoulder to shoulder, because we’re all gathered to worship our one God.” Wonderful,” By welcoming others into a shared experience, preachers and their congregation can create a sense of hospitality in faith. “I believe that’s real hospitality…we’re not only finding ourselves drawing people together in hospitality, but those, the assembly, all of them gathered there in the church, they’re going to experience that sense of hospitality.” 

The Preaching as Hospitality Formation program of Immaculate Conception Seminary School of Theology seeks to form seminarians, diaconal students, and religious and lay graduate students of theology to be compelling preachers who will offer a hospitality of the heart as they break open the Word of God. The initiatives help to form preachers who will understand and embrace preaching as hospitality, a ministry of inviting, welcoming, and offering compassion. The program also focuses on newly ordained priests and deacons and newly appointed pastors (less than five years) who are invited 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