Bishop Barron’s Sunday Sermons - Catholic Preaching and Homilies

Today the Church proclaims the Passion of Christ. The story of the Lord's suffering and death haunted the minds of the first Christians. All the Gospels center around it and find their fulfillment in it. The special emphasis in this years account, taken from the Gospel of Luke, is Christ's struggle with the false kingdoms of the world.

In our second reading for this Sunday, St. Paul lays out his resumé. In terms of the Judaism of his time, Paul was about as accomplished as one could hope to be: he was a defender of the tradition, steeped in the wisdom of his people, and blameless under the law. But after seeing Jesus risen from the dead, Paul said that he counted all of those achievements as loss and refuse. So we, he implies, should not base our lives on our accomplishments, degrees, social status--but rather on Christ crucified and risen.

The parable of the prodigal son is a portrait of God's gracious love and two negative responses to that love. Both sons, in their own ways, indicate the disposition of the soul in estrangement from God.

Today's scriptures present stories of two trees: the burning bush, that represents the reality of a soul that is receptive to God's presence, and the fig tree, which represents God's presence resisted and refused.