Bishop Barron’s Sunday Sermons - Catholic Preaching and Homilies

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.

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?

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

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.

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.

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.

As we once again commence the penitential season of Lent, it is good to get back to basics. We journey with Jesus into the desert, and with him, we confront the three basic temptations: sensual pleasure, power, and glory. Only when we set aside our obsessions with these three things can we be free to serve the Lord.

The most troubling and challenging of Jesus' teaching is the command to love our enemies. In this homily, I explore four good reasons why it is so important to engage in this most difficult act of love.

The readings for this weekend pose a blunt question: whom, finally, do you trust? "Trust" is meant here in an absolute sense. Where do you base your life? In God or in the things of this world? How you answer that question determines pretty much everything else.

In the thirteenth chapter of his first letter to the Corinthians, St. Paul sings a hymn to love. He tells us that love is "patient, gentle, kind, not snobbish" and that it "never fails." Love, after all, is what God is: willing the good of the other as other. When we love, therefore, we are sharing in the very life of God.