Bishop Barron’s Sunday Sermons - Catholic Preaching and Homilies

In this week's reading the prophet Habbakuk questions the ways of God, quite understandably. The evils throughout the world can be discouraging, but even though wickedness can seem unjustifiable and suffering can seem utterly meaningless God is in charge and is working His purpose out. The right response to suffering and evil is faith.

This week's Gospel contains one of the greatest challenges Jesus ever offered to his disciples: "If anyone comes to me without hating his father and mother, wife and children, brothers and sisters, and even his own life, he cannot be my disciple." Here Christ is emphasizing the great spiritual principle of detachment. In order to live healthy spiritual lives we must love Christ most of all, with everything else finding its meaning in relation to God.

This week's readings focus on the importance of humility. Humility is the foundation for the whole of spirituality. In order to truly pursue truth and goodness, it is necessary to let go of the ego and realize that everything we have and are is a gift from God.

Jesus' words from our Gospel this week inspired the name for my program, Word on Fire. Jesus speaks of the divine judgment that will fall like a cleansing fire on the earth. This is not opposed to God's love, but is rather what God's love looks like to a fallen world.

God cannot be analyzed scientifically the way one would study the things of the world, but God can be approached through religious reasoning, or Faith. Faith is often criticized as unintelligent tomfoolery. Nothing could be farther from the truth. The Catholic tradition reveals that Faith is a rational reaction to God in the religious person. It is the reasoning of the religious mind.

Very often we find ourselves drawn towards extremes: puritanism or hedonism, idolizing the world or demonizing the world. The proper Catholic balance involves a balance—a yes and a no—to both extremes. We should enjoy the world we have been given while understanding that it is not as important as the God who gave it.

How central is the Lord's Prayer to Christianity! Basically this prayer is about ordering ourselves to God and letting his way of being order all levels of our lives. But we must not think that we will easily orientate ourselves to God. There are powerful forces that resist this, and we must not be naive about them. The Lord's Prayer is the itinerary for our spiritual journey.

St. Paul tells us in our second reading that he boasts in the cross of Jesus. To any of his hearers in the first century this would have sounded like madness. Paul can boast in this shameful thing precisely because God has raised Jesus from death and thereby placed the world-the realm of hatred, violence, and division-under judgment. Now we must have the courage to leave the world and enter into the new creation which is the body of Christ.

Today's first reading describes the sin of David with Bathsheba, David's attempts to cover up his crime, and the subsequent punishment for his sin. Even God's chosen king fell into terrible sin. Each person must always be on their guard against temptation for although God offers grace, it is not cheap grace.

This week's readings are for the people who feel that they have no hope. Even in the darkest of times, God can create something from nothing and can bring grace back into our lives. In the first reading, the prophet Elijah brings the old widow's son back from the dead; in the Gospel, Christ does the same thing; and in St. Paul's letter, he recounts his conversion from a fierce persecutor of Christianity to its great advocate. In every case God made something from nothing and injected grace back into someone's life, and He can always do the same for us if we are open to Him.

The Church comes from the Eucharist for it is the sacrifice that makes saints. The Eucharist is essentially the fullest act of gratitude prefigured in Melchizedek finding its fulfillment in the sacrifice of Christ. Every Mass is a participation in and celebration of this sacrifice, but the feast of Corpus Christi is a time to be especially aware of the gift of the Eucharist.

This week is the great feast of Pentecost. Christ rules his Church from Heaven by sending his Spirit into the Church all over the world. We participate in the reign of Christ whenever we act in accordance with the Spirit.

In this week's reading from the Book of Revelation the narrator describes the arrival of the Holy City of the New Jerusalem. The visionary sees a great city and notes that there is no temple because the whole city has become a temple, a place of right praise. God created the whole world to shine in the divine light, and the visionary sees the fulfillment of this hope.

Today's reading from the Gospel of John offers a compelling meditation about the importance of Christ for the activities of the Church. Christians are meant to be fishers of men, but when we operate according to our own agendas and efforts we will catch nothing. We must act under the Lord's direction. If we follow Christ we will do great good indeed.

This week's scriptures present the hope of moving forward. All of us have sins and vices in our past. Christ offers us the possibility for forgiveness and a bright future in grace no matter how sinful our pasts are.

In this week's Gospel reading we hear the story of the Prodigal Son. Here, Christ provides a reflection on the nature of love and our relationship with God. God gives us gifts; we must receive them and give them back. Only when we accept grace freely and give it away will we live in a proper relationship with God.

There are moments in life when we sense that there is something more real, important and enduring than anything we normally experience. The story of the Transfiguration is a moment when The More breaks through. In these moments we feel God's presence strongly, and we must be awake when these breakthroughs happen.

We begin Ordinary Time with the wedding at Cana, a rich, spiritual story with great implications for the Church. Both weddings and wine are consistently used symbols in scripture, and each is utilized to a powerful degree to explain the Incarnation, grace, the Sacraments, and the fulfillment of God's love for us.

The greatest and most revered of Israel's kings was David. It is from the family of David that the Messiah would come into the world and to the surprise of Israel and of the world, the Messiah who is born from the House of David, is the God of Israel himself! Mary, the Mother of God, is therefore to be likened to a new Ark of the Covenant, for in her womb, the God of Israel dwells and makes himself not only Israel's Messiah, but in wonder of the Incarnation, he becomes for us a new and everlasting covenant.

At the start of this new liturgical year, we hear Luke's account of Jesus speaking about the end to all we believe to be permanent - the earth, the sky and order will all be disrupted. This isn't meant to scare us, but to remind us of what is permanent, on what we can depend. Jesus is the link to this stability and truth, and in this realization we may find unending peace.

At the end of the liturgical year, we celebrate the feast of Christ the King. But Christ's kingship is different from any with which we're familiar - his kingdom "does not belong to this world." His kingship doesn't demand violence, but truth. Following him brings us closer to God's grace.

Today's readings deal with the end of time and the great cosmic battle. In the Gospels, Christ fights against the powers of darkness, defeats them through the Resurrection, and brings His people together.

Our first reading for Mass this week contains the defining prayer of the Jewish tradition: the “Sh’ma.” In the Gospel, when asked which commandment is the greatest, Jesus, a pious Jew, recites this prayer from the book of Deuteronomy. We Christians too claim—or better, are claimed by—this great prayer. But what does it mean?

This Sunday's Gospel presents the extraordinary story of Christ's healing Bartimaeus. Bartimaeus is blind. Christ gives him not only the ability to see the world, but to see the world anew through the revelation of his Grace. The Christian way of life is best described as a new way of seeing and it is through this vision, illuminated by the light of Christ, that we are invited to know and see the world as God in Christ intends.

In today's Gospel, the apostles James and John ask Jesus to be given positions of glory in Christ's kingdom. Jesus reminds us that His moment of glory is His death on the Cross, and that if we want to partake in this glory we must commit to a self-sacrificing love, not a self aggrandizing ambition.

The danger of jealousy and envy is that it is as much damaging to others as it is to ourselves. When we are envious, or even ambitious for the purpose of outdoing others, it knocks us off our center and we lose our orientation toward Christ. To his disciples, Jesus presented the model of a child - one who thrives under authority, strives for obedience, and lives in the present. Envy lives in the past and the future, but God's grace is available now.

One of the great tensions in the spiritual life is between loving the law and being free of the law. I argue in this homily that learning to swing a golf club is a very good analogy in this regard. Listen and find out why.

The Lord Jesus is not speaking metaphorically about eating his flesh and drinking his blood - he has come to make of his own Body and Blood real food and drink. This revelation was and continues to be a stumbling block for many, but the faithful accept the mystery of the gift of Christ's Real Presence that is given to the Church in the Blessed Sacrament.

Today's Gospel comes again from the sixth chapter of John. Here Christ discusses the necessity and reality of the Eucharist as the Word of God made Flesh.

Today's readings are from First Kings and the sixth chapter of John's Gospel. Our passage for this weekend discusses the Eucharist as the necessary antidote for spiritual exhaustion. We all need the Body of Christ to nourish our souls and keep us in communion with God.

This week, Mark relays the story of Jesus giving the Twelve Apostles their "marching orders," the instructions on how they would go out and spread the word to the world. Notably, he tells them to go "two by two," laying the foundation for the communal nature of the Church. They are to bring nothing but the simple tools to keep them moving forward, and they are be resolute in fighting the demons of the world-injustice, corruption and dysfunction. These were as much instructions for the Apostles as they are instructions for us to fulfill the mission of the Church today.

Saint Paul conveys a unique and powerful perspective on suffering. What he called a "thorn in the flesh," was a suffering so great that it burdened him, prompted him to beg God for relief. But it is in this sort of suffering that we most acutely understand God's love. When all falls away, we have him, we cling to him and we are saved. And when we bear suffering leveled by others and offer it to Christ, we absorb it, we take it out of circulation, and ease the burden for others.

The Book of Leviticus outlines laws, practices and directives of things, people and animals that are unclean and shouldn't be touched. But Jesus decisively touches the unclean, allows himself to be touched, and sets about a new course for those who follow him. The new laws ask followers to believe in him, trust in him, and become a part of his community.

John the Baptist is one of the most important figures in Christianity, and provides a window into the tradition of the Jewish priesthood and the historical context of the day. John chose the river Jordan to baptize, a conscious move to display the forgiveness of sins against the backdrop of the Jewish history of Exodus and liberation. Yet while he was baptizing in the desert, likely an exercise in protest of the corruption in the Temple in Jerusalem, he was heralding the coming of Christ, one who will "baptize you with the Holy Spirit and fire."

To truly understand the significance of the Mass, we must understand the importance of blood sacrifice to Judaism in Jesus' time. On Yom Kippur, the high priest would enter the Holy of Holies and sacrifice a goat, upon which he would symbolically place the sins of the people, and a sheep. The blood would then be sprinkled around the sacred space and over the people. Jesus offering his body and blood at the Last Supper was a deliberate extension-fulfillment-of this offering. He was the sacrificial lamb, the scapegoat, upon which the temple is rebuilt-upon which reconciliation is offered.

The Holy Spirit thrives on the actions we take and decisions we make out of love, joy, peace, patience and more. These aren't abstract ideas that result in an internal satisfaction, they have concrete ramifications, rippling out into the world and affecting real, good change. When we choose light over darkness, participate in the sacraments, the Holy Spirit fill us.

St. Paul illuminates what it means to live in the Holy Spirit, acting and living out of love, and what it means to live outside of it, acting and living out of selfishness, hatred, immorality and impurity. Every step we take to deny the forces outside of the Spirit affirms our home inside of it. And the more we live inside the Spirit, the closer we are to the Kingdom of God.

Jesus was the meeting of heaven and earth. His Ascension returned him to God in order to reign as the world's new king, and his orders to the disciples to build his church were to be done with his leadership and assistance. And this is our mission - much like that of the disciples - finding what it is that Christ wants us to do to continue to build his church.

We are often mistaken in thinking that we have to love God in order for God to love us. That's not the case. God doesn't need our love; his love for us is unconditional. But in order to get more out of God's love, we have to give it away. The more we give, the more we have - "a delightful stream of grace" that spreads joy among us.

St. Peter's impassioned sermon in the temple precincts condemned the people for killing the "author of life", but further explains that Jesus' resurrection means that he is forgiving the people for their sin. His return heralds his rescuing us, if we let him. We are inseparable from God's love, and will be forgiven for our sins.

The resurrected Jesus appears to his disciples, fearful they were to be targeted next, to deliver a message of peace with a mission. This is the mission of the Church, to proceed in spreading the news about Christ imbued with the life-affirming, sin-forgiving power of the Holy Spirit. It's a mission that will connect us to God.

Entering Holy Week, we see numerous stirring examples of Jesus' fulfillment of Old Testament prophesies. From the direction he enters Jerusalem to his mode of transport, we find again and again how he is the one intended to reclaim the temple and prove to the world that he is indeed the son of God, chosen to save us through his revolutionary example of love and forgiveness.

One of the most unsettling accounts in the Bible, that of Abraham being asked by God to sacrifice his son, ironically shows His goodness and love for us. If we put our faith in God, if we listen to God, if we obey God, we will be rewarded. A few of Jesus' disciples witnessed it with the Transfiguration, and we too can witness it if we trust in God's will for us, if we have faith.

Lent begins with a passage about Noah and flood. It's representative of not only sin, but of God's good grace. It's also a fitting entree into Jesus' journey into the desert, also symbolic of sin, and how his presence there infuses a forgotten, desolate place with life and goodness. When we are racked with sin, it is Christ who can infuse us with life and goodness.

This Sunday's Gospel tells the story of the paralytic man whom Jesus forgave and commanded to walk. Paralysis is an effective allegory for sin-how it traps and immobilizes us. God's desire for us is movement, for his love can shatter our paralysis and free us from our sinful past. God is not a "no", but a resounding "Yes."

The leper in Mark's gospel, a feared presence to the ancient Israelites, is made clean by Jesus' benevolent touch. A connection is formed, to each other, to God, that reminds us all of the comforting power of communion, the healing nature of our Creator.

In Mark's gospel, we see find Jesus exorcising an unclean spirit from a man in the temple, doing so as both the messenger and the message. Jesus unites the divided, purges the false, and fulfills the teachings. He is the authority - the truth - we seek.

A divine calling, whether the meaning is revealed in this life or the next, always requires our biblical heroes to do more than they feel they are capable. But all of us must answer, regardless of the call. Jonah provides a very "human" example of how difficult the work may be, and how the result might not be what we anticipate, but that it is always worthwhile and reflects God's will that we enact the purpose that brings our life to its proper fulfillment.

When we witness something beautiful, something important, we desire to share it with others, just as St. John did when he said to his disciples, "Behold the Lamb of God" - and just as those disciples did when they spread the good news of the Messiah. We quest to know God, to follow God, but more important is God's quest for us and our willingness to heed his call.

Herod sees all from the confines of his ego, trying to make the world conform to his plans. The Magi look outside of themselves, looking for an order that they will conform to. By focusing their attention away from themselves, they are spiritually liberated to follow the star of Bethlehem. This is the liberation that Christ grants us. He allows us to escape the jail cell of our egos to join the liberating current of his love, leading us closer to eternal life.