Prof. Lisa Lickona, STL, will be among the speakers at the New York State Eucharistic Congress in Auriesville, which is set for Oct. 20-22 at Our Lady of Martyrs Shrine.

An assistant professor of Systematic Theology at St. Bernard’s School of Theology and Ministry in Rochester, Prof. Lickona served for eight years as editor for saints at Magnificat, where she researched and wrote daily on their lives. She will speak on “Learning from the Love of Women Saints for the Eucharist” at the Eucharistic Congress.          

“I love to speak about the saints; it’s probably my favorite thing to do,” Prof. Lickona told The Good Newsroom. “I’ve been to the Shrine of Our Lady of Martyrs many times. I have a great devotion to the saints that were martyred there, and to St. Kateri Tekakwitha. So the opportunity to speak at a beautiful event like this with my fellow New Yorkers about something I love, it was just something I couldn’t pass up.”                               

She noted that her talk will likely “focus on our own local saints and their own devotion to the Eucharist. So I probably will focus (in part) on Kateri Tekakwitha, Elizabeth Ann Seton, and our Servant of God, Dorothy Day…My great desire is to help people see the way that God is at work in the lives of the saints, and to discover that He is at work in their lives in the same way – that they’re being called into a profound encounter of love with Christ in their lives.”         

She added that she often seeks ways to help people see “how the Eucharist is the answer to the longings in their own hearts for love, and how it can fulfill those longings. I have eight children and they’re all named after saints.” 

Prof. Lickona became assistant professor of Systematic Theology at Saint Bernard’s School of Theology and Ministry in 2021. Her work focuses on the intersection of holiness and life as expressed in the lives of the saints and the Church’s theological anthropology.     

She is co-editor of The Relevance of the Stars: Christ, Culture, Destiny by Lorenzo Albacete; she is also a regular essayist for The National Shrine of Saint Elizabeth Ann Seton in Emmitsburg, Maryland, https://setonshrine.org/, and a research director for a new audio adventure series on the saints produced by The Merry Beggars at Relevant Radio.         

Prof. Lickona earned her B.A. (Liberal Studies; Great Books Program) at the University of Notre Dame and holds the Masters in Theological Studies and Licentiate in Sacred Theology (STL)  from the Pontifical John Paul II Institute for Studies on Marriage and Family. She has lived with her family for nearly 20 years in the Finger Lakes region of upstate New York, where for several years she operated a micro-organic farm and organized a local farmers’ market.