Bishop Barron’s Sunday Sermons - Catholic Preaching and Homilies

In this week's Gospel reading we hear the story of the Prodigal Son. Here, Christ provides a reflection on the nature of love and our relationship with God. God gives us gifts; we must receive them and give them back. Only when we accept grace freely and give it away will we live in a proper relationship with God.

There are moments in life when we sense that there is something more real, important and enduring than anything we normally experience. The story of the Transfiguration is a moment when The More breaks through. In these moments we feel God's presence strongly, and we must be awake when these breakthroughs happen.

We begin Ordinary Time with the wedding at Cana, a rich, spiritual story with great implications for the Church. Both weddings and wine are consistently used symbols in scripture, and each is utilized to a powerful degree to explain the Incarnation, grace, the Sacraments, and the fulfillment of God's love for us.

The greatest and most revered of Israel's kings was David. It is from the family of David that the Messiah would come into the world and to the surprise of Israel and of the world, the Messiah who is born from the House of David, is the God of Israel himself! Mary, the Mother of God, is therefore to be likened to a new Ark of the Covenant, for in her womb, the God of Israel dwells and makes himself not only Israel's Messiah, but in wonder of the Incarnation, he becomes for us a new and everlasting covenant.

At the start of this new liturgical year, we hear Luke's account of Jesus speaking about the end to all we believe to be permanent - the earth, the sky and order will all be disrupted. This isn't meant to scare us, but to remind us of what is permanent, on what we can depend. Jesus is the link to this stability and truth, and in this realization we may find unending peace.

At the end of the liturgical year, we celebrate the feast of Christ the King. But Christ's kingship is different from any with which we're familiar - his kingdom "does not belong to this world." His kingship doesn't demand violence, but truth. Following him brings us closer to God's grace.

Today's readings deal with the end of time and the great cosmic battle. In the Gospels, Christ fights against the powers of darkness, defeats them through the Resurrection, and brings His people together.

Our first reading for Mass this week contains the defining prayer of the Jewish tradition: the “Sh’ma.” In the Gospel, when asked which commandment is the greatest, Jesus, a pious Jew, recites this prayer from the book of Deuteronomy. We Christians too claim—or better, are claimed by—this great prayer. But what does it mean?

This Sunday's Gospel presents the extraordinary story of Christ's healing Bartimaeus. Bartimaeus is blind. Christ gives him not only the ability to see the world, but to see the world anew through the revelation of his Grace. The Christian way of life is best described as a new way of seeing and it is through this vision, illuminated by the light of Christ, that we are invited to know and see the world as God in Christ intends.

In today's Gospel, the apostles James and John ask Jesus to be given positions of glory in Christ's kingdom. Jesus reminds us that His moment of glory is His death on the Cross, and that if we want to partake in this glory we must commit to a self-sacrificing love, not a self aggrandizing ambition.