Bishop Barron’s Sunday Sermons - Catholic Preaching and Homilies

A careful reading of the Torah, the first five books of the Old Testament, reveals that Israelite identity was determined through three sets of laws: liturgical, ritual, and moral. In Catholicism, the liturgical laws have been sublimated and the ritual laws largely set aside. But what about the moral law? In this case, Thomas Aquinas says, they remain unchanged, for they represent the first principles of the natural law—which is to say, those fundamental instincts that undergird all moral reasoning. In our first reading this week from Exodus, we hear wonderful precepts that continue to this day to shape the moral consciousness of the world.

Our first reading for this weekend is taken from that wonderful middle section of the book of the prophet Isaiah. This particular passage is fascinating and conveys a very important but often unremarked upon biblical truth: Israel is God’s chosen people—of all the nations of the world, God chose the Jews to be his special priestly people—but biblical revelation begins, in fact, with the creation of the world and the whole human race. God chooses Israel to play a priestly and prophetic role for the sake of everyone else and everything else.

Throughout the book of the prophet Isaiah, there are references to God’s holy mountain. In the twenty-fifth chapter of Isaiah, we have still another reference to the holy mountain, and this is our first reading for the weekend. The mountain in question is, of course, Mt. Zion—which is to say, the mountain where the temple of the Lord is situated. The temple is the place where Israel comes together in right praise of God. Now, Isaiah is indeed talking about the Mt. Zion and the Temple that existed in his time, but it’s eminently clear from the language of his prophecy that he is also talking about the mystical Mt. Zion, the definitive temple, the place where the right praise of God has come to full expression.

Our first reading, taken from the fifth chapter of the prophet Isaiah, presents a classic trope within the Israelite tradition: the image of the vineyard as a representation of the people Israel. We hear that the author is going to sing a song of his “friend” and his vineyard. What becomes immediately clear is that the friend is the Lord God and the vineyard is the Lord’s holy people. This song is a love story indeed, but one that stresses the demands of love. 

Our first reading for this weekend is taken from the eighteenth chapter of the book of the prophet Ezekiel—one of the four major prophets, along with Isaiah, Jeremiah, and Daniel. This chapter is worthy of careful attention, for it represents a sort of breakthrough in the moral consciousness of the West. Though some of the prophet’s observations might strike us as obvious, we have to realize how revolutionary this thinking was for the time.

Our very brief first reading is taken from the magnificent fifty-fifth chapter of the book of the prophet Isaiah. This section of Isaiah—which stretches from chapter forty through chapter fifty-five—is one of the most theologically sophisticated and illuminating passages in the entire Old Testament. Nowhere is Israel’s theology of God more fully and clearly developed. And one of the principal points made in this section is that God is incomparable. Over and over again, Isaiah insists that God is radically other; that he is like no other being, even the most exalted.

Our first reading—taken from the twenty-seventh and twenty-eighth chapters of the marvelous book of Sirach, called in older Bibles the book of Ecclesiasticus—has to do with anger, vengeance, and forgiveness, themes that will figure prominently in the preaching of Jesus. “Wrath and anger are hateful things, yet the sinner hugs them tight.”

The Gospel for today addresses an issue of tremendous practical importance—namely, whether and how we ought to engage in fraternal correction. This is the traditional term for constructive criticism of our brothers and sisters. Over and against the modern liberal etiquette of “live and let live,” the Bible does indeed think we should engage in fraternal correction, and the extremely clarifying Gospel passage for today tells us how.

Jesus in our Gospel for today says, “Whoever wishes to come after me must deny himself, take up his cross and follow me.” Do you want to save your soul? There’s the formula. Find the path in your life that leads you to more and more self-emptying and self-gift, which conforms you to the love that God is. But then the Lord gets even more specific: “For whoever wishes to save his life will lose it, but whoever loses his life for my sake will find it.” Saving one’s life means making filling oneself up and making oneself as safe and comfortable and sated as possible—which leads to boredom, disgust, and despair.

In the twenty-second chapter of the book of the prophet Isaiah, we find the prophet’s only criticism of an individual. The man in the prophet’s crosshairs is a certain Shebna, who is described as “master of the palace.” He is a high-ranking authority in the government of the people. This reading forces us to ask a simple and very hard question: How goes it with the power and authority that you have? Do you spend the capital of your authority on projects meant to burnish your reputation or do you spend it to the benefit of others?