Bishop Robert Barron’s Sermons - Catholic Preaching and Homilies

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

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

The risen Christ makes two basic moves: he shows his wounds and speaks a word of peace. In so doing, he reminds us of our sins and he assures us of his forgiveness. In this a new world opens up, for we know that nothing can finally separate us from the love of God--even the act of killing God!

The risen Jesus breaks through the locked doors of our fears and brings us the Shalom (the full flourishing) that God wants for his people. Then he breathes into us the power and joy of the Holy Spirit and he sends us out to spread the good news.

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

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

As we approach the Passion, the celebration of Jesus' death, we're called to a new life, a new glory, and a new way of being. We allow our lives to break open so they become a new source of life for others.

Though the Enlightenment taught us to privatize and interiorize our religion, the Bible has a robustly "political" sense of God's activity. God's will is revealed in the movements and struggles of the nations. National sin (like personal sin) results in divine judgment. This deeply Biblical intuition is revealed in Lincoln's reading of the Civil War and in Karl Barth's interpretation of the First World War.

In cleansing the temple and announcing its destruction, Jesus shows that he himself is the new temple, the authentic dwelling place of God on earth. In the measure that we are grafted onto him, we too become temples of the Holy Spirit.

Abraham's willingness to sacrifice his beloved son Isaac is a foreshadowing of God the Father's willingness to sacrifice his Son for the salvation of the world. Both reveal the terrible and wonderful law of the gift: the more you give away what you love, the more your being is enhanced.

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.