Bishop Barron’s Sunday Sermons - Catholic Preaching and Homilies

God sometimes expresses his anger at his people Israel. This is not an emotional snit into which God falls; rather, it is a way of expressing his passion to set things right. So God permits the destruction of the Temple and the carrying off of Israel into exile in order to purify and cleanse. When catastrophe befalls us, we should trust in the strange providence of God. God is always about the bus...

For a Jew of Jesus' time, Moses and Elijah would symbolize the Law and the Prophets, the two major divisions of the Scriptures. Jesus' conversation with them during the Transfiguration symbolizes something that is emphasized throughout the New Testament, namely, that Jesus fulfills, brings to completion, both the Law and the prophets. He fulfills the promise implicit in the Old Testament.

Our readings for the first Sunday of Lent highlight the cosmic and universal nature of God's redemptive purpose. The covenant of Noah was made, not just with Noah and his family, but with "all living things." We see this universality on iconic display in the Gospel. Jesus goes into the desert and he is "waited on by angels and accompanied by wild beasts." Jesus' redemption affects all dimensions o...

The new wine that Jesus speaks of is the Gospel itself, the Good News that God has joined our human condition. In order to take in such a message and to conform our lives to it, we must expand. If we remain in the narrow confines of the old self, we won't be able to handle the richness and fullness of the Gospel message. So change! Conform yourself to the love that Christ is. Become like new wines...

In the wonderful Gospel story for today, the paralytic gets to Jesus only because there are four friends willing to carry him to the Lord. Are there people around you--friends, co-workers, family-members--who are, for various reasons, paralyzed in regard to their relationship to Christ and the Church? And are you willing to carry them? That is the evangelical question that this Gospel poses.

In our second reading, St. Paul tells us to do everything--even such simple acts as eating and drinking--for the glory of God. We should make sure that the light shines, not on us, but on God. And here's the wonderful paradox: since God needs nothing, whatever we give to him comes back magnified to us. This is why the saints shine with a special radiance, a luminosity greater than anything they co...

St. Paul tells us in our second reading that preaching the Gospel is not a matter of choice for him; it is a compulsion, a necessity. In the homily for this week, I talk about St. Peter and St. Edmund Campion, two Christians who, 15 centuries apart, felt that same pressing obligation to proclaim Jesus Christ. Do we have it?

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

The familiar theme of detachment runs right through all three of our readings for this week. Paul tells the Corinthians who are married to carry on as though they were not married and those who buy and sell as though they were not buying and selling. The point is that one should orient one's life totally to the absolute good who is God. When that orientation takes place, everything else—from spous...

Jesus Christ is God's love made flesh, a gift to all the nations. As such, he transcends the disputes and squabbles that so often characterize the relationship between nations, cultures, and peoples. This boundary-transcending quality of Christ is expressed beautifully in the story of the journey of the Magi.

There are three words that jump out at me from our Gospel reading for today's feast: "haste," "astonished" and "treasured." Each one says something important about the spiritual life. When we know what God wants for us, we should act without hesitation; we should "go in haste." When God breaks into our natural world, we should be astonished. And then, like Mary, we should learn to treasure God's r...

Recently, I read an interview with Bono, the lead singer of the group U2. Asked about his religious beliefs, he replied, "I think that there is a love and a logic that lies behind the universe. So I believe in God. I also see, as an artist, the poetic appropriateness of that unspeakable power manifesting itself as a baby born in straw poverty. And that's why I'm a Christian." My sermon for today i...

For the fourth Sunday of Advent, the Church asks us to juxtapose stories of David and Mary. David decides that he wants to build a temple for the Lord, but God does not favor his plan; Mary hears what God wants to do through her, and she acquiesces. It is always a matter of following the promptings of the divine will and not our own desires, even when we are convinced that those desires are good a...

Our first reading for this Sunday is an especially sacred one in the Christian tradition, for it was precisely this passage from Isaiah that Jesus chose to comment upon when he first rose to speak at the beginning of his public ministry. Using Isaiah's imagery, Jesus spells out for us the meaning and purpose of his work: to heal the brokenhearted, to declare liberty to captives, to announce a year...

In the very first line of his Gospel, St. Mark tells us that he is going to share with us Good News, Glad Tidings, about Jesus, the Son of God. In many ways, the rest of the text is but a playing out of the implications of that statement. In this homily, I explore the meaning of the phrase "Good News" in connection with Jesus.

Lent is, of course, a penitential season, but Advent is as well. We get in touch with our sinfulness during Advent precisely because we want to prepare ourselves for the coming of a Savior. If there is nothing to be saved from, then there is no point in rejoicing at the arrival of Jesus the Lord. The prophet Isaiah offers us a number of powerful images for sin in our first reading for this Sunday....

Peter Maurin, the co-founder of the Catholic Worker Movement, took Jesus' words in our Gospel for today with consummate seriousness. He felt that the corporal and spiritual works of mercy constituted a sort of socio-economic program. Following the exhortation of Jesus, Maurin wanted to create a society in which "it is easier for men to be good." His example is still a challenging and compelling on...

All of us believers have been entrusted with a treasure: our faith. What do we do with this treasure while we await the return of the Lord? We must make it grow, precisely by giving it away. We must evangelize. The very worst thing that we can do is to bury it away in the secrecy of our hearts, endeavoring to "keep it safe." Privatizing the faith is the key to losing it. A challenging message for...

How do we wait? That is the question addressed by Jesus' parable for today. While we wait for the second coming of the Lord, we should keep our lamps stocked with oil, that is to say, we should pray, study, love, do the works of mercy, and keep vigil. In so doing, we are ready for the arrival of the Bridegroom.

At its best, religion orients our lives to God and moves us away from the terrible preoccupation with our own egos. But at its worst, religion reinforces the ego and actually blocks our access to God. In his great polemic against the pharisees, Jesus warns us against this dysfunctional side of religious belief and practice.

"You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, all your soul, and all your mind--and your neighbor as yourself." This is the way that Jesus summed up the law and the prophets. Finally, it is a matter of love, and the love of God and neighbor are tightly intertwined. I try to illustrate this principle by telling the life of Rose Hawthorne, a woman who loved God precisely by loving some of t...

God the Father has prepared a wedding banquet for his Son, and we are all invited. That is the poetic summary of salvation that can be found in the parable that Jesus tells this week. The urgent point is this: we must respond to the invitation, and we must don the proper wedding garment. Failure to do one or the other means we miss the celebration.

In this striking parable of the vineyard, Jesus lays out both God's vision for the world as well as his plan of redemption. The Lord wants us to be fully and dynamically alive, and to assure that this happens, he gives us his only Son as a redeemer. In the course of my homily this week, I try to "decode" this wonderful story.

Our second reading, from Paul's letter to the Philippians, contains one of the oldest texts in the tradition, a "hymn" that Paul received and adapted for his purposes. It speaks of a fully divine Jesus who was, nevertheless, willing to empty himself utterly and become a slave on our behalf. All of the drama, poetry, and power of Christianity is contained in that paradox.

The parable that Jesus tells in our Gospel for today is one of his most disturbing and confounding. Giving the same wage to those who worked for one hour and those who labored the whole day just seems unjust. The story is meant to place a question in our minds: what exactly is divine justice and how does it differ from our conception of justice?