Bishop Barron’s Sunday Sermons - Catholic Preaching and Homilies

Our first reading for Mass this week contains the most sacred prayer in 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. Listen as I explicate this central and decisive statement of Biblical faith.

James and John want to sit at Jesus' right and left when the Lord comes into his glory. What they don't realize is that his glory is the moment of his crucifixion. To be at his right and his left at his enthronement is, therefore, to be crucified with him, to be willing to give oneself totally away. Be careful what you ask for!

If an angel of the Lord stood before you and invited you to pray for one thing, what would it be? The book of Wisdom suggests today that you should pray, not for power or wealth or beauty or health, but for the wisdom that would enable you to use any and all of those gifts well. Let the first reading for this week be a sort of spiritual exercise for you.

Our readings for this week are all about marriage. In the Catholic understanding, a married couple do not so much receive a sacrament as they become a sacrament. They realize that their marriage is not about them; rather it is a vehicle through which God's purposes are being worked out.

Jesus certainly manages to get our attention in this week's Gospel. Don't literalize his language, but feel its power. Are you willing to eliminate certain things from your life--ways of grasping, ways of walking, ways of seeing--that are compromising your friendship with God? What, precisely, are you willing to sacrifice?

We have been reading for the past several weeks from the letter of James, which is a treasure-trove of practical wisdom. James tells us this week that outer conflicts flow from a war of passions within each individual. How do you find the inner peace that will conduce to outer peace? Listen to the sermon!

Another homily from Fr. Robert Barron and Word on Fire Catholic Ministries.

Whatever we reverence--baseball, good music, golf, the spiritual life--we are surrounded with laws. Law is meant to preserve and enhance the integrity of certain basic goods. But law also carries with it a shadow side, namely, a certain legalism and fussiness. Our readings for this weekend explore these various aspects--positive and negative--of religious law.

The Eucharist has been, from the beginning, a source of conflict and division. This is, of course, not Christ's will, for the eucharist is supposed to be the great unifier. Nevertheless, for the past two thousand years, the radical doctrine of the real presence has compelled some to rebel. Why is this? Take a listen.

Our Gospel for this weekend is the climax of Jesus' Bread of Life Discourse from the sixth chapter of John's Gospel. Given every opportunity to offer a symbolic interpretation of his words concerning his body and blood, Jesus intensifies the realism of his statement: "My flesh is real food; my blood is real drink." All Catholics must wrestle, in season and out, with the implications of this claim.

In our second reading for this weekend, St. Peter tells us that, in sharing the Christian story, he was not trading in "cleverly concocted myths." There is a sharp distinction to be drawn between myth and history, and it matters enormously that Christianity is not a mythic system, but an historical religion. This feast of the Transfiguration gives us the opportunity to reflect on this difference.

We continue our reading of Paul's extraordinary letter to the Ephesians. We hear that the cross of Jesus has broken down the wall of enmity which divided Jews and Gentiles. At the very center of Christianity is the conviction that the death of Jesus on the cross represented God's victory over all the dark forces that divide us. What looked like ultimate defeat was in fact God's triumph over the po...

For the next several weeks, we are going to be reading from Paul's magnificent letter to the Ephesians. In our passage for today, we learn that we are situated within the context of a great theodrama, written and directed by God, and designed to lead us to eternal life. The Biblical drama has five acts: creation, the fall, the formation of Israel, Jesus Christ, and the Church. We read the Scriptur...

Every baptized person is conformed to Christ: King, Priest, and Prophet. Thus speaking the divine truth (prophecy) is not the concern of priests and bishops alone, but of all members of the church. From Ezekiel and Mark, we can discern a number of qualities of the prophetic office. First, the prophet does not speak his own word, but God's. Second, the prophet is given a difficult assignment. And t...

In order to understand the power of our Gospel reading for this week, we must attend to the book of Leviticus. In that great rule-book of Israelite life, we hear that contact with a hemorrhaging woman or with a corpse would result in ritual uncleanliness. When Jesus touches the hemorrhaging woman and the dead daughter of Jairus, he is not made unclean; in fact he makes them clean. In so doing, he...

Psalm 130 begins with the words, "out of the depths, I have cried to you, O Lord." Throughout the great tradition, the prayer ""de profundis,"" (out of the depths) has been one of the most powerful expressions of our reliance upon God. When our lives have bottomed out, when we are lost and at the end of our strength, we turn to God. The cry of the apostles in the boat, as the waves crash over the...

For this feast of the Body and Blood of the Lord, I reflect on the Mass as a sacrifice. Sacrificial language runs right through all of our readings for today, just as it runs through the whole of Israelite history. In Jesus' sacrifice on the cross, God's fidelity unto death finally meets a human obedience unto death--and in that meeting, the covenant is fully realized, and salvation is accomplishe...

On the feast of the Trinity, we reflect on the uniquely Christian definition of God: God is love. Love is not something that God does, or an attribute that God has; love is what God is. This means that God must be a play between lover, beloved, and love--between Father, Son, and Holy Spirit.

All the Jews in Jerusalem for the feast of Pentecost heard the disciples preaching in their own languages. This miracle of the Spirit is the reversal of the Tower of Babel, when God scattered the nations and confused their languages. The Holy Spirit is the solution to the spiritual problem of the one and the many. In God alone can the many come together fruitfully as one.

This week I discuss two more themes that emerge in the Da Vinci Code: the Gnostic Gospels and anti-Catholicism. Much of the storyline of the Da Vinci Code flows from the controversial Gnostic tellings of the life of Jesus. These are, in fact, far less historically reliable than the canonical Gospels--not to mention less theologically sound. And the book as a whole should be classed in the genre of...

I don't like departing from the Scriptures in these homilies, but the appearance of the movie based upon the wildly popular novel The Da Vinci Code warrants a response. The central claim of the book--that Jesus is not divine--stands directly opposed to the central and defining claim of the Church. The Da Vinci Code argues that the divinity of Jesus was a fourth-century invention. Nothing could be...

Jesus Christ is infintely more than a moral ideal, a saint whom we admire from afar. In accord with the image from the Gospel for today, he is the vine upon which we have been grafted like branches. This means that he is our life blood, the very energy of our existence. Therefore we should read our lives this way: Jesus Christ is living his life in us.

Luke paints a fascinating portrait of the risen Jesus in our Gospel for today. He stands in the midst of his disciples, gathering them as the new Israel; he shows them that he is densely, physically real, even going so far as to eat a piece of fish in their presence. Jesus is not a phantom or a dream or a disembodied ideal; he is a living person in whom we find peace.

Graves are usually places of peace, repose, and meditation. We sit by a gravesite or we stroll through a cemetery in order to reflect on lives well lived or on the mystery of death. But there is nothing peaceful or meditative about the grave of Jesus, and there never developed within the Christian tradition a cult of the tomb of the Lord. This is because this grave has been robbed--and by the most...

The donkey upon which Jesus rides into Jerusalem is a wonderful image for discipleship. He is a simple, humble, unassuming creature--and he is pressed into service because the Master has need of him. We like to organize our lives according to our projects and plans, but the key is allowing ourselves to be used according to Christ's needs and purposes. The whole point is to become, like the humble...