Bishop Barron’s Sunday Sermons - Catholic Preaching and Homilies

Trusting the Darkness

Authentic faith has nothing to do with credulity or intellectual naivte. It has everything to do with placing one's trust in the God whom we cannot, even in principle, know with clarity. It is the willingness to follow the promptings of God, even when we don't see where they might lead.

The Lessons of Qoheleth

Both our first reading and Gospel function as a slap in the face, cold water, a wake-up call. They show how passing, ephemeral, and unreliable are the goods of this world. The idea is to set our hearts, as Paul says, on the higher things, rooting our lives in God.

The Lord’s Prayer

Our Gospel for this week is of the utmost importance, for we hear the Son of God himself teaching us to pray. In this homily, I walk rather carefully through the major petitions of the Our Father, noting how central this prayer is to Christian life and spirituality.

Paul's Suffering

Paul says in our second reading that he "makes up in his own sufferings what is lacking in the sufferings of Christ." This means that Paul-and all of us-have the enormous privilege of participating in the act by which Christ saved the world, an act of suffering love. How do you interpret your own pain? Might it be a participation in the salvation of Christ?

The Natural Law

What the church calls "the natural law" is, as Moses suggests in our first reading, close to us, in fact, written on our hearts. Thomas Aquinas said that this natural, moral law is a reflection of the eternal law of God and is, in turn, the ground for all of our positive laws. When the relationship between God's law, the moral law, and political law is lost, our society suffers.

Gospel Freedom

Our readings for this weekend are completely counter-cultural and counter-intuitive. We put a huge premium on freedom and self-determination in regard to choosing our careers. But this is not the Biblical perspective. Elisha accepts the mantle of prophecy, simply because God commands him, and he leaves everything behind. Jesus tells a man to follow him, even if that means not attending his own father's funeral. In the determination of the meaning of your life, what, or better who, finally matters?

Great Canticle of Zechariah

Another homily from Fr. Robert Barron and Word on Fire Catholic Ministries.

A New Creation

Easter is the dawn of a new creation. St. John tells us that Mary Magdalene came to the tomb early on the morning of the first day of the week. This is meant to call to mind the first day of creation, when God said, "Let there be light" and brought order out of chaos. From the meaninglessness of death, God brings eternal life. This is the central and revolutionary message of Easter.

The Burning Bush

Moses sees a bush that burns but is not consumed. This is a lovely symbolic expression of the way God relates to the world. The closer God gets, the more we become radiant with his presence. God's proximity does not mean our destruction or the compromising of our integrity; rather it is the means by which we become fully ourselves.

The Father in Faith

Abraham was chosen by God as the founder of a people who would be the means by which God would save the world. His great mark is faith, that is to say, trust. Faith is what Adam and Eve couldn't muster (they grasped at godliness) and from this followed the agony of the world. God commenced a rescue operation by setting Abraham in quest of a promised land.