Bishop Barron’s Sunday Sermons - Catholic Preaching and Homilies

All throughout the Easter season, we will read at Mass from the wonderful Acts of the Apostles, St. Luke’s description of the adventures, challenges, and achievements of the early Christian community. His purpose is to show what “Apostles,” people sent by the risen Jesus, were doing. This is why it is so important that we, their distant spiritual descendants, should pay close attention. Our passag...

Easter Sunday represents God’s great yes to humanity. Throughout history, humanity has turned its back on God, but the Lord has constantly sent rescue operations to bring us back into community with him. The Resurrection of Christ is the definitive rescue operation and is our great hope for salvation.

On Palm Sunday, we are privileged to listen to one of the great Passion narratives. In Matthew’s account, we see Jesus as a still-point in the maelstrom, as God’s fidelity amidst a cacophony of sin. In the course of the Passion, Jesus confronts betrayal, laziness, violence, untruth, abuse of power, self-destruction, and wanton cruelty—the whole panoply of human dysfunction. And he takes away this...

The great Lenten readings for Cycle A move in a kind of crescendo from thirst, to blindness, to death—all metaphors for spiritual dysfunction. This Sunday’s Gospel deals with death through the story of Lazarus who, after four days in his tomb, represents someone who is totally sunk in sin, totally dead spiritually. The voice of Jesus calls Lazarus, and all of us, back to life—no matter what we've...

Our first reading for this weekend gives us a glimpse of one of the most powerful texts in the Bible—indeed, one of the truly great literary works that has come down to us from the ancient world. I’m talking about the story that we refer to as first and second Samuel. At the heart of this narrative—rich in theology, psychology, history, politics, human relationships—is the figure of David, who alo...

Our first reading for today is the famous quarreling of Israel by the waters of Meribah in the book of Exodus. We find the chosen people in the midst of the desert—which is to say, in the process of conversion, on the way from the slavery of sin to the freedom of God. But all conversion takes time; those on the way always tend to look back. And so we hear: “Why did you ever make us leave Egypt?” H...

Last week, we looked at the familiar material from the third chapter of Genesis. God’s human creatures fell, precisely in the measure that they stopped listening to the voice of God and listened to the voices of the tempter and their own desires. This week, in chapter twelve, we see the beginning of God’s great rescue operation. And just as the trouble began when God’s human creatures refused to l...

We enter once more into the very holy season of Lent: a time of preparation; a desert time; a time of prayer, fasting, and almsgiving; a time to return to the basics. And so how wonderful that the Church gives us, for this first Sunday of Lent, a passage from the very beginning of the Bible, a story of universal and enduring significance. We hear of the creation and fall of mankind. But we will no...

As we continue our focus on the Old Testament texts, we turn this week to the nineteenth chapter of the book of Leviticus. As the name suggests, the book has a good deal to do with the Levites, who were the priests of ancient Israel. Accordingly, there is much talk of ritual, sacrifice, taboo, the clean and the unclean, etc. In a word, the book of Leviticus was laying out the practices by which Is...

Our first reading for this weekend is taken from a book that we don’t consult that frequently in the course of the liturgical year—namely, the book of Sirach. It is presented as a series of sayings of Jeshua ben Sira, a wise Jewish elder. Our reading is taken from the fifteenth chapter of Sirach, and it has to do with the awful fact of our freedom.

I would like to concentrate on the marvelous passage from chapter 58 of the prophet Isaiah, which is our first reading for this weekend. This final section of Isaiah was written, the scholars tell us, after the return of the captives from Babylon, when Israel was trying once again to find its way. And so we find some very practical spiritual advice about engaging in concrete acts of love.

There is a tendency, I’m afraid, to flatten out and sentimentalize the meaning of the Presentation of the Lord in the Temple. We see it as just a charming tale of a little child being entrusted to the protection of God at the beginning of his life. But there is more going on here—a lot more. To understand it, the Church gives us the somewhat enigmatic reading from the book of the prophet Malachi.

Our first reading from the prophet Isaiah and our Gospel are tightly linked, for St. Matthew, in articulating the meaning of Jesus, cites (as is his wont) an Old Testament text—namely, our reading from the eighth and ninth chapters of Isaiah. The prophet speaks of conflict in the land of Zebulon and Naphtali, and then of a great light that shines in that area, signaling the victory of God.

I want to focus this week on the extraordinary passage from the book of the prophet Isaiah, for it reveals a central dynamic of all of biblical revelation, and indeed of the spirituality of every Christian: that the Lord’s election is not for the sake of the elect, but for the sake of the whole world.

The entirety of this Sunday’s second reading might be seen as so much boilerplate, throwaway lines that a writer used at the commencement of his letter, something like a formal salutation. But in point of fact, almost the whole of Christianity is contained in these lines, if we have but the eyes to see. So take out your Bibles today and revisit the beginning of 1 Corinthians. It will tell you pret...

The first sacrament one can receive in the Church, Baptism, defines our relationship with Christ. In it, we are reborn as part of his Mystical Body and gifted with the grace of God’s love. Baptism lays the foundation for every other sacrament we are to receive and inextricably links us with the Trinity.

Today’s readings for Epiphany speak of a light that shines on Israel, the chosen people, but that is meant for the whole world, a light that is a beacon summoning all the nations. And that Light is Jesus Christ himself. As the prophets predicted, this Light is the illumination of all the world, the Light to whom all seekers are destined to come.

The point of our Gospel for Holy Family Sunday is to make us see a contrast between Herod, the perfect type of the anti-family man, and Joseph, the selfless protector of Mary and Jesus. Herod’s whole existence was conditioned by and predicated upon what was good for Herod; Joseph’s whole existence and behavior are conditioned by obedience to the Word of God. Herod is out for Herod; Joseph has tran...

The Bible turns upside-down the way we think about the God-human relationship. In almost every other religion or philosophy, God or the gods are the powerful forces who have to be supplicated, begged, and prayed to in order for human beings to get what they want. But the Bible presents an entirely different picture. As I have often said, the Bible is not the story of our quest for God; it is the s...

On this third Sunday of Advent, we hear for the first time this season of the great figure of John the Baptist. It’s not really possible to understand Jesus apart from his precursor. All four Gospels compel us to come to grips with John. His job is always the same: he points to Jesus. If we’re staring at John, we’re missing the point. Well, in our Gospel for today, John indicates the Lord in a mos...

Last week, I spoke of preparing for the coming of the Lord using the great image from the second chapter of Isaiah: the Lord’s holy mountain. How do we make this mountain the highest mountain? On this second Sunday of Advent, I want to follow the Church as she invites us to look at another chapter of Isaiah—namely, the magnificent eleventh chapter, which describes the world that emerges at the com...

We come once again to Advent, the beginning of the liturgical year and the great season of waiting. Christian life has a permanent Advent quality, for we are always expecting the coming of the Lord. Now, Jesus came, he will definitively come, and he is coming even now—for the risen Lord wants to take up residence in us today. So Advent is, perhaps most immediately, a preparation for that coming; w...

It is extraordinarily significant that the liturgical year ends with the feast of Christ the King. For this great fact—that Jesus Christ is the king of the world—is indeed the culmination of the biblical revelation. It is, in a very real sense, the point of the whole story the Bible is telling.

I’m pretty sure that in thirty years of priesthood, I’ve never preached on this Sunday’s short second reading from Paul’s second letter to the Thessalonians. And what a little gem it is! Isn’t it fascinating that St. Paul, precisely in the context of a letter to his church on spiritual matters, endeavors to speak of work? When we do authentic work—of whatever kind—we participate in God’s ongoing c...

The story conveyed in our first reading from the second book of Maccabees is one that resonates up and down the ages, that still stirs our hearts today. It’s the story of a martyr’s death. We can talk about heaven, we can speculate about it, we can write learned treatises about it, and we can hope for it. But up and down the centuries, it is the martyrs—from the ancient Maccabees to the Christians...