Bishop Barron’s Sunday Sermons - Catholic Preaching and Homilies

Friends, we come to Palm Sunday, which is also called Passion Sunday because we always read at Mass the Passion narrative from one of the synoptic Gospels. This year, we hear from Saint Luke, and I want to look at two elements unique to his particular version, both of which have to do with forgiveness.

Friends, we come to the Fifth Sunday of Lent, and I want to reflect today on our second reading from the Letter of Paul to the Philippians. It is a passage of both literary genius and spiritual power, one that uses the language of conversion—of letting go of the way I understood and defined my life and turning toward an entirely new way.

Friends, this Fourth Sunday of Lent gives us marvelous readings: the First Reading from the book of Joshua, the Second Reading from Paul’s Second Letter to the Corinthians, and the Gospel reading, which is the magnificent parable of the prodigal son from Luke. The correspondences between these three readings I think are quite striking, and they have to do with the Eucharist and divinization.

Friends, we come to the Third Sunday of Lent, and we have the extraordinary privilege during Cycle C of reading this account, in the third chapter of the book of Exodus, of Moses’s encounter with the burning bush. It’s one of the pivotal texts in all of Scripture; so much of our great tradition refers to and flows from it, and it sheds light in every direction, telling us profound truths about God, about the spiritual life, and about our relationship to the Lord.

Friends our Gospel for the Second Sunday of Lent this year is Luke’s account of the Transfiguration. And it opens up something that is marvelous and confounding; there is sort of an aching and a longing associated with this text. It speaks to us of these moments when reality becomes incandescent or transparent to something more—something that lies beyond our ordinary experience.

Friends, we come to the holy season of Lent. Pascal said that most of us go through life diverting and distracting ourselves so that we don’t come to terms with the big questions: God, meaning, purpose, eternal life. The Gospel for this week, Luke’s marvelous account of the temptation of Jesus, invites us to wrestle with three questions in particular.

Friends, for this Eighth Sunday in Ordinary Time, the Church gives us the opportunity, in our second reading from 1 Corinthians 15, to reflect on the Resurrection of Jesus from the dead. It was the Resurrection that Paul correctly took as the hinge, the central teaching, of Christianity. But what do we mean by “Resurrection”? How do we theologize about it?

Friends, our Gospel for today is from the Sermon on the Plain, which is Luke's version of Matthew's Sermon on the Mount, and it’s not only saying something about the moral life; it’s also saying something very profound about God. It has to do with what a number of philosophers in the twentieth century called the aporia—the difficulty or even impossibility—of the gift. Can we give a gift that’s truly a gift, with no strings attached?

Friends, on this Sixth Sunday in Ordinary Time, we have the first reading from the prophet Jeremiah in tandem with the Gospel from Luke’s Sermon on the Plain. And both readings draw out a basic feature of biblical spirituality—namely, the ordering of the heart, that deepest organizing principle of one’s entire life, to the Lord. 

Friends, for the Fifth Sunday in Ordinary Time, the Church gives us a wonderful pairing of readings: the first reading from the sixth chapter of Isaiah and the Gospel from the fifth chapter of Luke. They both speak to what I think are three key moments in the Christian spiritual life: first, the breakthrough of grace; then, the acknowledgement of sin; and finally, being sent on mission.