Bishop Barron’s Sunday Sermons - Catholic Preaching and Homilies

Mark tells us that Jesus went into the desert and there was ministered to by angels while he lived among the beasts. One of the marks of sin is an aliention of the body and the spirit, the animal and the angelic in all of us. Jesus represents the proper balance between the two.

Christ is the bridegroom and we the church are his bride. He wants to affect a union with us that is as intimate as a husband's and wife's. If we are to take in the new life that Jesus offers us, we must be transformed from within. New wine (God's life) can only be received by new wineskins.

God wants nothing more than for us to be fully alive. Sin cramps us, paralyzes us, prevents us from flourishing. Jesus' whole life and being is God's "yes" to human beings. So he forgives the sin of the paralytic and then invites him to walk. The glory of God is a human being fully alive.

Jesus seeks out even the unclean and the despised. Whenever we wander from God's love, we become deformed; whenever an aspect of ourselves--mind, will, body, imagination--loses its connection to the Lord, it becomes sick. To be clean is to be reconnected to the power of Christ the Center.

Eight days after his birth, Mary presents Jesus in the temple. Our lives take on meaning and purpose only in the measure that we make of them gifts to God. The Mass is the great act by which we, in Christ, present ourselves to the Father.

Jonah hears God's invitation and refuses to cooperate. But God's providence is universal and his demand is absolute. When he has gone through the discipline of the belly of the fish, Jonah is ready. At his word, the entire city of Nineveh repents. When we hear our call to Nineveh, let us not resist!

The young prophet Samuel listens to the Lord's voice, seeks guidance from an elder, and then disposes himself to do what the Lord demands. In this he becomes a model of the disciple: the one who hears and obeys.

At the beginning of his public ministry, Jesus, the sinless one, stands shoulder to shoulder with sinners in the muddy waters of the Jordan River. Jesus' whole purpose is to go the lost, the sick, the forgotten, the sinful in order to bring the light of God's love.

The Three Wise Men see the sign, they move, they overcome opposition, and then they give the new-born King the best they have. Having walked this spiritual itinerary, they then "go back by a different route," for no one ever comes to Christ and goes back the same way he came.

The Christmas story is essentially a tale of subversion. Everything the world holds up as beautiful and worthy of attention is undermined: wealth, power, privilege, comfort. The icon of God is not the mighty Caesar Augustus, but the little child of Bethlehem, too weak to hold up his own head. Real power is love: there is the subversive message of Christmas.