Secret of the Heart

I have been telling tales for a long time, and telling them in my ministry since I was nineteen years old and teaching in a rural Catholic elementary school in Indiana.  That was a long time ago, since I am writing this at age seventy-one.

Over the years I crafted stories to teach both catechetics and homiletics in my church.  I am a Catholic Christian.  But this series of stories came about because I began mentoring an apprenticeship class in sacred storytelling in 1994.  My students were Catholic and Protestant, women and men, laity and clergy in diverse ministries across North America.  They had many skills, but they found it difficult to find good resources for their storytelling.

So many of the stories used in ministry were narrowly theological, with tidy moral lessons attached to them.  And many of them were simply not good stories.  And so I began compiling stories from around the world that would illuminate the Scriptures for every Sunday of the year.

These stories are folktales, parables, myths, legends, and fables from the peoples of the world.  And also from the many religious traditions of the world.  And they hold powerful images that illuminate the Good News of the Gospel.

It took years and years of refining these stories, expanding the commentaries, and testing them in my telling and the tellings of those I mentored.  I started in 1994, and now have completed the task that was given to me.  It has been a long and demanding journey.  And it has transformed my own spiritual life.  So here they are... may these tales illuminate your own spiritual quest as you share your life with others in this beautiful world. 

Robert Béla Wilhelm

July 2015