Bishop Barron’s Sunday Sermons - Catholic Preaching and Homilies

A Friend of the Lord Jesus

The readings for the Second Sunday of Lent brought to mind my good friend Bishop David O’Connell, who was killed last month. He was one of the most Christ-like people I have ever known—a man of deep spiritual conviction, with a profound sense of the power of the Holy Spirit. Like Abraham, he followed the Lord’s call from his homeland of Ireland to serve in the United States, working among the poor and with members of gangs. He called those he served to a deep life of prayer and spiritual transformation in Christ, a mystery revealed in the Gospel account of the Transfiguration.

Time to Get Back to Basics

Friends, we come now to the holy season of Lent, our preparation for Easter. I've often said that Lent is a time to get back to basics. It’s like when you're starting the football season and have to get back to fundamentals of the game, or when you're getting back to playing golf after a long winter away and have to remember the fundamentals of the swing. So in the spiritual order there are certain fundamental truths, and the readings for this first Sunday of Lent are especially good at getting us in touch with them.

Love as God Loves

Friends, we continue our reading of the marvelous Sermon on the Mount. We cannot read this sermon as one ethical teaching among many. Everyone from Plato and Aristotle all the way up through Kant and Hegel have a moral philosophy—an understanding of how humans ought to behave. This is precisely the wrong way to read the Sermon on the Mount, because no one—ancient or modern, religious or nonreligious—sounds like Jesus. His radical command to love as God loves, in fact, sounds a little bit crazy.

Be a Saint!

Friends, we have the privilege of continuing to read from the Sermon on the Mount, where Jesus himself lays out his basic teaching. What we find today is Jesus as the new Moses. Like Moses, he goes up on a mountain, and he receives and then gives a new, intensified Law. Jesus wants the corrective power of the Law to go beyond merely the behavioral level and to get down to the level of the heart. We are not called to spiritual mediocrity; we are called to be saints!

You Are the Salt of the Earth

Friends, we are reading from the marvelous Sermon on the Mount in the Gospel of Matthew. This week, we hear Jesus compare his disciples to three things: the salt of the earth, the light of the world, and a city set on a mountain. What do all three of these things have in common? They do not exist for themselves; rather, they exist for something else. How is your Christianity impacting the world around you—making it better and getting in the way of evil and wickedness?

The Key to Happiness

Friends, our Gospel for this Sunday is one of the great passages of the New Testament—namely, the Beatitudes from the fifth chapter of Matthew. "Beatitudo" just means happiness, and the one thing we all want is to be happy. Well, here is the Son of God telling us how—so let’s pay close attention!

Join Your Life to the Light

Friends, this liturgical year, we are reading from the Gospel of Matthew, and Matthew is written precisely for a Jewish audience. This is why, over and over again, we find Matthew putting Jesus within an Old Testament context. And in our readings for this weekend, the Church juxtaposes a prophecy from Isaiah with its fulfillment in Matthew: “Land of Zebulun and land of Naphtali, the way to the sea, beyond the Jordan, Galilee of the Gentiles, the people who sit in darkness have seen a great light, on those dwelling in a land overshadowed by death light has arisen.” This may not mean much to us today, but Matthew’s audience of first-century Jews knew exactly what he meant.

Behold, the Lamb of God!

Friends, we return this Sunday to Ordinary Time, and the Church gives us a rather extraordinary reading from the first chapter of the Gospel of John. Seeing Jesus, John the Baptist says something that we repeat at every single Mass: "Behold, the Lamb of God, who takes away the sin of the world." Many Christians don’t know what this phrase means; they think that it has to do with Jesus’ gentleness or innocence. But John is drawing our attention here to who Jesus was—and the Good News of what he did for us on the cross.

Be Attentive to Epiphanies

Friends, we come today to the Feast of the Epiphany. The word “epiphany” comes from the Greek meaning “intense appearance.” It is something that not only gets our attention but also reveals something of enormous significance. For the wise men of course, it was first the star; but the real epiphany was the baby King. We should be attentive in a similar way to these moments of breakthrough that speak to us of God—and we should respond.

Go in Haste, Be Astonished, Treasure!

Friends, on this Solemnity of the Blessed Virgin Mary, the Mother of God, we hear three significant words in the Gospel from Luke: haste, astonished, and treasured. If God has broken into your life in some decisive way, if you’ve been given your mission, then don’t about what the world says: move, act, go. When God manifests himself, the right response is astonishment. And then savor, treasure, reflect upon these astonishing things in your heart. In all these ways, we honor Mary, the Mother of God.