Bishop Barron’s Sunday Sermons - Catholic Preaching and Homilies

Our Gospel for today is one of the most devastating texts in the New Testament. Jesus tells us that whenever we neglected to feed the hungry, clothe the naked, visit the imprisoned, welcome the lonely, we failed to care for him. Dorothy Day said that everything a baptized Christian does every day should be related to the corporal and spiritual works of mercy.

At the heart of the Christian moral and spiritual life is a willingness to risk. When we cling selfishly and protectively to what God has given us, we dry up. But when we risk it, give it away in love, we increase the life within us.

We hear today the parable of the five wise and five foolish virgins. The former are ready for the bridegroom when he comes; the latter are not. We have no idea when Christ will come to gather us to himself: so we must be ready--through prayer, the sacraments, and forgiveness.

The problem with the Pharisees is not what they teach. It is that they use religion--the very thing that is meant to take us out of ourselves--as a means of aggrandizing the ego. Law, custom, practice, religious dress, titles--all of it becomes a way of trumpeting the self.