Bishop Barron’s Sunday Sermons - Catholic Preaching and Homilies

Friends, we've all hit points in which we felt we could not go on spiritually, physically, or mentally. In the Gospel today, Christ declares himself the bread that has come down from heaven. If you want to live in the eternal realm, you must eat food that sustains forever.

Friends, the ensemble of this world that God has made is good, and we're meant to enjoy it; however, we hunger for something that transcends this world. Christ is the only good that can satisfy us.

Friends, the sixth chapter of John is one of the most profound reflections we have on the meaning of the Eucharist. Let us pay close attention to our Gospel today, which is John’s account of the miraculous multiplication of the loaves, to form a better appreciation of the miracle we partake in at every Mass.

Friends, our readings today center around the familiar biblical theme of sheep and shepherding. Both human and divine, it is Jesus who has come to lead us, walking in front of his people, alongside us, and behind us as both the God of Israel and the righteous heir of David.

Friends, today's first reading makes it clear that if you are baptized, you are called to bring God's word to others. This week, I share five recommendations as you follow his calling as priest, prophet, and king.

Friends, all baptized Christians are summoned to announce the Word of God. In our Gospel today, we hear the call, like Ezekiel, to share the Good News with all whom we encounter, especially those who have heard but turned away from the faith.

Friends, in our Gospel today, we find two stories tensely intertwined together, and both contain great suffering and great healing. Through this passage, we are reminded that even in the midst of confusion and frustration with God, we are called to trust in the Lord and his timing.

Friends, the book of Job is one of the most profound and most challenging books in the entire Bible. In today’s reading, we see that God does not hand-wave away Job’s suffering. Rather, the Lord places profound hurt and heartache in an infinitely greater context—into his loving providence. We must not narrow our focus on our pain; we must rather open ourselves to ever greater trust.

Friends, in our Gospel today, Christ paints a picture of a growing mustard tree, under whose shade all people are invited to dwell. Jesus speaks here, using a parable, about the reign and rule of God. Even now, the kingdom of God—the kingdom that finally matters and endures—is spreading far and wide across the whole world.

Friends, for this feast of Corpus Christi, today’s readings run red, dripping in sacrificial symbolism. When we gather together for Mass, we are not calling to mind some disconnected historical incident. Rather, we spiritually and physically participate in the re-presentation of Christ’s Body, Blood, Soul, and Divinity.

Friends, Trinity Sunday serves as a wonderful opportunity to unpack the life-giving relationship between the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. Every time we make the sign of the cross, we invoke the power of the Trinity, thereby linking ourselves to the love that God is.

Friends, we come today to the marvelous feast of Pentecost, a celebration of the Holy Spirit, the Church, and evangelical preaching. Pentecost reverses the cacophonous confusion at Babel. We see various languages, cultures, and identities come into concordance under God. In the same way, we must find unity in Christ alongside our many distinctions and diversity.

Friends, in today’s Gospel, Jesus makes extraordinary observations about discipleship. He speaks about being enraptured by God, having exuberant joy, accepting scorn from persecutors, and being consecrated into truth.

Friends, with these fabulous readings for the sixth Sunday of Easter, we discover an embarrassment of riches through the exploration of God's care and concern for us. In this sermon, I delve into these marvelous texts and explicate three fundamental truths: - God is love - God has loved us first - We are invited to participate in God's love through our own love and self-gift to him and one another

Friends, in our Gospel passage today, Jesus proclaims that he is the vine and we are the branches. There is give and take in this divine relationship. Not only are we rooted in Christ’s mystical body, but he endeavors to cultivate his love and mercy within our bodies. In this analogy, we find a powerful image of spiritual growth.

Friends, in today’s first reading, St. Peter tells us that there is no salvation outside of Christ. In this homily, I encourage you to let the truth of St. Peter’s statement, which challenges modern sensibilities, sink in—and further explore what this means precisely for both Christians and non-Christians.

Friends, Christ acts as an advocate for our souls through the cosmos-reorienting events of his death and Resurrection, the forging of a connection between heaven and earth. Our brother who walked the same ground and breathed the same air is now seated at the right hand of the Father. Now, in his heavenly advocacy, we find extraordinary hope.

Friends, today’s Gospel reveals the dawning of Christianity. With his wounds bared to his disciples immediately upon his arrival in their midst, Christ shows to us also our greatest sins in those nail and spear scars. God came, and we killed him—but no sin is greater than the Lord’s love, and so he arose, offering us peace and forgiveness beyond all understanding.

Friends, a blessed and peaceful Easter to you! Although grave sites are known to be quiet places of reflection, God, through his sovereign power, overcame the corruption of sin by his Resurrection from the dead this Easter morning. From his empty tomb, we learn that God doesn’t let death have the last word—and thereupon hangs the tale of Easter.

Friends, one of the best known stories in Western culture is the narrative of Christ’s Passion and death. However, this very familiarity can block our understanding of the account. What I want to do in this homily is to draw your attention to three odd details of Mark’s Gospel, each of which packs a punch spiritually.

Friends, one of the most fundamental beliefs of the Biblical Israelites is that God is a covenant-maker. He formed his people through a series of agreements and contracts saying, “I will place my law within them and write it upon their hearts; I will be their God and they will be my people.” This law comes into our hearts precisely through the Eucharist, which is nothing other than a representation of the cross of Jesus.

Friends, our Gospel for today contains one of the most important lines in the entire Bible: “For God so loved the world that he gave his only Son, so that everyone who believes in him might not perish but might have eternal life.” To “believe” here means much more than to accept the truth of an idea; it is to enter into the space opened up by the death of the Son of God. When you do that, you are born again; when you do that, you have eternal life.

Friends, I have often said that Lent is a bit like basic training for the military or summer workouts for a football team—it is a chance to get back to the fundamentals of the faith, namely, the Ten Commandments. In this homily, I look at each of the Ten Commandments, using them as an examination of conscience for this Lenten season.

Friends, if the intention of an author is to convince people to read and think about what he’s written, the author of Sunday's first reading has done his job well. We hear the deeply troubling story of Abraham’s willingness to sacrifice his own son, Isaac. How do we reconcile God’s love with his asking Abraham to kill his own son? How should we take the fact that Abraham was willing to follow through with it? And what does this mean for how we must order our own lives?

Friends, Lent is a marvelous opportunity to deepen our lives of prayer, to temper our desires for food and drink, and to engage in a graced time of alms giving. Let’s use this season to get our bodies and our behavior patterns in order, to show our love and service in very concrete ways.

Friends, today’s Gospel centers around Jesus’ healing of a leper. Although there aren’t many lepers around today, there are plenty of people that we treat as outsiders or pariahs. We should welcome them as Jesus does.

Friends, in this Sunday's readings, St. Paul highlights the significance of evangelization. The Church, by its very nature, evangelizes, going out to the ends of the world with its good news. And woe to us if we fail to do this! Paul urges us to organize our lives around mission, and to even move out of our comfort zones to do so.

Moses is, without a doubt, the greatest figure in the Old Testament. He heard the voice of God from the burning bush; he was given the Ten Commandments; he was permitted to talk to God as to a friend. But Moses speaks of a prophet who is to come, who is “like himself” and who should be listened to. Jesus is this prophet who has the legitimate personal authority to speak the divine word and bring healing to creation.

In today’s first reading, we find the story of Jonah, a narrative about the acceptance (or rejection) of God’s mission. We are all called to difficult things, and so most of us sinners, most of the time, do everything we can to avoid our mission. In Jonah’s case, it was physical flight, but for many of us it’s choosing to ignore what God has said, a giving in to every other voice, taking the path of least resistance, making excuses, pleading our own sinfulness, settling for spiritual mediocrity. What would happen if every single person in our society commenced to embrace his or her mission from God? One man converted the entire city, from the King to the very animals. Nothing is impossible for God and for those whom God has empowered.

With the whole Church around the world, we return to Ordinary Time. This week, we have a wonderful Old Testament reading from the first book of Samuel having to do with the call of the prophet Samuel, and Eli his mentor helping him discern the voice of God. We know that story as a charming, even sentimental story—and it is that—but it's much more than that. And to see it, we have to get a wider perspective.

The Gospel writers compel us, as it were, to pass through John the Baptist to get to Jesus; all four Gospels give us a version of Jesus’ baptism by John. But this baptism was embarrassing to the early Church, because it was interested in presenting Jesus as the Son of God, and yet people were coming to John as sinners for a baptism of repentance. Why would the incarnate Son of God seek out such a baptism? It is the very embarrassment of the baptism that, in many ways, is the point.

For Epiphany Sunday, we hear the marvelous story from the Gospel of Matthew in which the Magi journey to see the Christ child. This scene has beguiled artists, poets, and preachers for centuries. But we can distill five profound spiritual lessons—about being attentive, taking action, facing opposition, giving Christ what is best in us, and being transformed into new creations—from this perhaps overly familiar story.

The Bible is not particularly sentimental about families. What makes a family holy, as far as the biblical writers are concerned, is its willingness to surrender to the purpose of God. We see this in a number of key figures, including Joseph, Anna, and Simeon.

The dramatic readings for this fourth Sunday of Advent place us right in the heart of a central mystery in the Bible: the mystery of God’s providence. God cares for his world, but often in a way that is confounding to us, because God plays a subtle and long game. God is a God who makes promises, and he is faithful to them. But they often don't arrive just as we’d expect—which is why we have to wait.

The third Sunday of Advent is traditionally called “Gaudete Sunday.” “Gaudete” is a Latin imperative—it’s a command—which means “rejoice.” The Church is telling us to be happy. And in the first reading—a marvelous passage from the sixty-first chapter of the prophet Isaiah, which presents the motif of the “anointed one”—it gives us the reasons why we should rejoice.

In our magnificent first reading from the prophet Isaiah, which is echoed in the words of John the Baptist in today’s Gospel, a voice cries out: “Every valley shall be filled in, every mountain and hill shall be made low.” Advent is a great time for us to clear the ground, to make level the path, so as to facilitate what God, with all his heart, wants to do.

Advent, like Lent, is properly a penitential season. To enter into Advent, to prepare for the coming of the Savior, is to enter into our need for a Savior. How wonderful that on the First Sunday of Advent, the Church gives us a beautiful reading from the sixty-third chapter of the prophet Isaiah offering a series of images, each one meant to evoke this sense of loss and pain and helplessness. Until we enter into the power of these images, we won't know what it's like to long for the Savior.

Our first reading is taken this weekend from the last chapter of the marvelous book of Proverbs. After ruminating for many pages on different aspects of the wise life, the author concludes with a hymn of praise to a smart, industrious, dedicated, and pious wife. I would like to focus on the theology and spirituality of work implied in this passage. Our work makes us collaborators with God, who gives us the privilege of participating in his good governance of the universe.

Our first reading is taken this weekend from the last chapter of the marvelous book of Proverbs. After ruminating for many pages on different aspects of the wise life, the author concludes with a hymn of praise to a smart, industrious, dedicated, and pious wife. I would like to focus on the theology and spirituality of work implied in this passage. Our work makes us collaborators with God, who gives us the privilege of participating in his good governance of the universe.

Our first reading for this weekend from the book of Wisdom might easily slip past or through your mind, but it shouldn’t. It articulates what is arguably the central principle of biblical revelation: what I would call the primacy of grace. As I have often said, the Bible is not the story of the human quest for God. You can find that in a thousand books of philosophy or spirituality. Instead, the Bible is the story of God’s quest for us. In the spiritual order, it is always God who takes the initiative, God who sets the tone, God who is the master of the conversation.

A careful reading of the Torah, the first five books of the Old Testament, reveals that Israelite identity was determined through three sets of laws: liturgical, ritual, and moral. In Catholicism, the liturgical laws have been sublimated and the ritual laws largely set aside. But what about the moral law? In this case, Thomas Aquinas says, they remain unchanged, for they represent the first principles of the natural law—which is to say, those fundamental instincts that undergird all moral reasoning. In our first reading this week from Exodus, we hear wonderful precepts that continue to this day to shape the moral consciousness of the world.

Our first reading for this weekend is taken from that wonderful middle section of the book of the prophet Isaiah. This particular passage is fascinating and conveys a very important but often unremarked upon biblical truth: Israel is God’s chosen people—of all the nations of the world, God chose the Jews to be his special priestly people—but biblical revelation begins, in fact, with the creation of the world and the whole human race. God chooses Israel to play a priestly and prophetic role for the sake of everyone else and everything else.

Throughout the book of the prophet Isaiah, there are references to God’s holy mountain. In the twenty-fifth chapter of Isaiah, we have still another reference to the holy mountain, and this is our first reading for the weekend. The mountain in question is, of course, Mt. Zion—which is to say, the mountain where the temple of the Lord is situated. The temple is the place where Israel comes together in right praise of God. Now, Isaiah is indeed talking about the Mt. Zion and the Temple that existed in his time, but it’s eminently clear from the language of his prophecy that he is also talking about the mystical Mt. Zion, the definitive temple, the place where the right praise of God has come to full expression.

Our first reading, taken from the fifth chapter of the prophet Isaiah, presents a classic trope within the Israelite tradition: the image of the vineyard as a representation of the people Israel. We hear that the author is going to sing a song of his “friend” and his vineyard. What becomes immediately clear is that the friend is the Lord God and the vineyard is the Lord’s holy people. This song is a love story indeed, but one that stresses the demands of love.

Our first reading for this weekend is taken from the eighteenth chapter of the book of the prophet Ezekiel—one of the four major prophets, along with Isaiah, Jeremiah, and Daniel. This chapter is worthy of careful attention, for it represents a sort of breakthrough in the moral consciousness of the West. Though some of the prophet’s observations might strike us as obvious, we have to realize how revolutionary this thinking was for the time.

Our very brief first reading is taken from the magnificent fifty-fifth chapter of the book of the prophet Isaiah. This section of Isaiah—which stretches from chapter forty through chapter fifty-five—is one of the most theologically sophisticated and illuminating passages in the entire Old Testament. Nowhere is Israel’s theology of God more fully and clearly developed. And one of the principal points made in this section is that God is incomparable. Over and over again, Isaiah insists that God is radically other; that he is like no other being, even the most exalted.

Our first reading—taken from the twenty-seventh and twenty-eighth chapters of the marvelous book of Sirach, called in older Bibles the book of Ecclesiasticus—has to do with anger, vengeance, and forgiveness, themes that will figure prominently in the preaching of Jesus. “Wrath and anger are hateful things, yet the sinner hugs them tight.”

The Gospel for today addresses an issue of tremendous practical importance—namely, whether and how we ought to engage in fraternal correction. This is the traditional term for constructive criticism of our brothers and sisters. Over and against the modern liberal etiquette of “live and let live,” the Bible does indeed think we should engage in fraternal correction, and the extremely clarifying Gospel passage for today tells us how.

Jesus in our Gospel for today says, “Whoever wishes to come after me must deny himself, take up his cross and follow me.” Do you want to save your soul? There’s the formula. Find the path in your life that leads you to more and more self-emptying and self-gift, which conforms you to the love that God is. But then the Lord gets even more specific: “For whoever wishes to save his life will lose it, but whoever loses his life for my sake will find it.” Saving one’s life means making filling oneself up and making oneself as safe and comfortable and sated as possible—which leads to boredom, disgust, and despair.