Bishop Barron’s Sunday Sermons - Catholic Preaching and Homilies

Friends, in this Sunday’s Gospel, we encounter the infinite, extravagant, radical love of the Creator for his creation. Jesus paints for us, in three parables, a portrait of God: he is, if I can borrow that lovely phrase from Catherine of Siena, “pazzo d’amore”—crazy in love with us, including the lost sheep and the prodigal sons.

Friends, there are a lot of people today who might be intrigued by Jesus. They find him interesting, remember him as a spiritual teacher, or have warm feelings about him. But in today’s Gospel, Jesus is saying to his fair-weather fans—those who are following him because he’s fascinating and charismatic—that being his disciple is not a walk in the park; it is something of supreme spiritual and moral importance.

Friends, at the heart of what St. Ignatius of Loyola teaches in the “Spiritual Exercises” is the idea of detachment. If we are to do the will of God, then we have to become detached from the worldly goods to which we are addicted. A basic principle of this detachment is “agere contra,” which is Latin simply for “to act against.” The idea is simple: if you are attached or addicted to some worldly good, then the best thing is to act against it—to press, aggressively even, in the opposite direction.

Friends, I am admittedly a bit reluctant to talk about the topic of our Gospel for today—namely, this famously controversial matter of how many will be saved. I have talked a lot and written a lot about this issue, and people have very strong opinions about it: everybody will be saved, only a handful will be saved, and everything in between. There is a lot of energy around this question. In this homily, I would like to get at the question in a new and fresh way by looking at Jesus’ answer in the Gospel.

Friends, the readings for this weekend are tough. Here is the principle behind them, one that is simple to state, but difficult to take in: in a world gone wrong, those who come to us speaking and embodying the truth are going to be opposed. In our first reading from Jeremiah and in Jesus’ harsh, challenging message in the Gospel, we encounter the disruptive, burning, cleansing quality of authentic religion.

Friends, Joseph Campbell and, more recently, Jordan Peterson are very interested in the Jungian archetype of the hero's journey. We see it all over the literature of the world and popular culture, from "The Lord of the Rings" to “Star Wars." But it is also on display very strongly in the Bible. In our remarkable second reading from the Letter to the Hebrews, the author reflects on faith as a sense of trust in God and a willingness to follow him on adventure—in short, as accepting the invitation to a hero’s journey.

Friends, all three of our readings Sunday speak of a primordial spiritual truth—namely, the need to detach oneself from the goods of the world. This has nothing to do with a hatred of the world or a puritanical spirituality of flight from the world; rather, it has to do with knowing how to wear the goods of the world lightly. These goods—wonderful as they are—all finally crumble, evanesce, and disappear; they are not our ultimate good, and we are not meant to cling to them as though they were.

Friends, our Gospel for today is St. Luke’s version of the Lord’s Prayer, the Our Father. This prayer, which is probably recited millions of times a day all over the world, includes some of the best-known words on the planet. But what do they mean? It might be good for us to walk slowly through Luke’s version to see what this great prayer is about—and what we are asking for when we pray it.

Friends, the Gospel for this Sunday is the wonderful story of Martha and Mary. But the Church sets this up in a really interesting way by giving us a first reading from Genesis 18—the mysterious story of Abraham being visited by three guests. The two stories together show us that the problem is not hospitality, nor being active as opposed to contemplative; rather, the problem is being focused on many things instead of the one thing necessary, in which everything else tends to fall into the right place.

Friends, the Gospel for this Sunday is one of Jesus’ best-known parables: the story of the Good Samaritan. Karl Barth, who learned it from the Church Fathers, taught that every parable of Jesus, at the deeper level, is finally about Jesus himself. The parable of the Good Samaritan is a good example of this principle; it is fundamentally about Christ healing fallen humanity.