Bishop Barron’s Sunday Sermons - Catholic Preaching and Homilies

In the years following the Second Vatican Council, we became very hesitant ever to invoke the category of the divine punishment. Yet, this motif can be found throughout the Bible, both Old Testament and New. How do we properly understand it? Our second reading from Mass, taken from the letter to the Hebrews, gives us some important guidance. It places God's punishment in the context of love and discipline. God punishes us, not capriciously and arbitrarily, but out of a desire to bring us to deeper life, much as a parent will, from time to time, punish a child. I'm eager to hear your reaction to these reflections on a tricky but important theme in Biblical theology.

Our second reading this week is from the 11th chapter of the letter to the Hebrews, and it concerns that central virtue of the Christian life: faith. To believe is not to be naive, superstitious, or uncritical. It is not opposed to reason. Rather, it is a reasonable leap into the darkness of that which transcends what we can know and control. As such, it is analogous to the "leaps" made by a man about to marry, by a scientist embarking on an experiment the result of which he does not precisely know, by an adventurer about to embark on his journey of exploration.

Our first reading for this Sunday is taken from the wonderful book of Ecclesiastes. This Biblical text is made up of the cranky reflections of Qoheleth, an old man who has seen it all and done it all--and finds all of it "vanity and a chase after wind." Why do we attend to his rather sardonic meditations? We do so because it is altogether salutary to be reminded that our ultimate joy is found in none of the goods of this world. So sit down with Qoheleth, pretend he's your curmudgeonly but loveable grandfather, and listen.

The Bible speaks often of prayer, that intimate communion and conversation with God. Our readings for this Sunday present, if I can put it this way, the rules of prayer. First, we must pray with faith and confidence; secondly, our prayer must be accompanied by forgiveness; thirdly, we must pray with persistence, and finally, we must pray in the name of Jesus the Lord. Why does our prayer not "work?" Perhaps it's because we are not following the rules.

Both our first reading and Gospel for this week speak of the importance of keeping our attention riveted on God. The three angels visit Abraham, and he drops everything in order to receive them with hospitality; Jesus comes to her home, and Mary sits at his feet, listening to his words. When God is the absolute priority in our lives, everything else that we are worried about about falls into place. Augustine said, "love God and do what you want." This implies that once God is the unambiguous center of our lives, we can confidently arrange and respond to all of our particular concerns.

The story of the Good Samaritan is not merely a morality tale, an account of the kind of life we should lead. It is that, but, at the deepest level, it is also a telling of the basic story of sin, fall, and redemption. All of us sinners are the man beaten up and left half-dead by the side of the road. We cannot be saved by law or religion or our own works, but only by Jesus Christ and his grace. This best-known of Jesus' parables is finally a narrative of salvation.

Our Gospel reading for this Sunday is the account of Jesus' sending of the seventy-two disciples. In the instructions he gives them, we can discern an outline of the life and work of the Church down through the ages. At our best, we are missionary church, empowered by prayer, marked by simplicity of life, bearing health and salvation, and proclaiming the reign of God.

In the stories of the prophets Elijah and Elisha we clearly see the great Biblical theme of vocation and election. Our lives our not about us; it is not finally our autonomy that matters. Rather, we are claimed and chosen and sent by God, and only in the measure that we accept this divine mission do we find true joy. When he resisted God's will and sought to justify himself, Elijah was summarily fired; when Elijah put his mantle over the shoulders of Elisha, Elisha dropped everything and followed the will of God. If you want your whole world turned upside down, read the 18th and 19th chapters of the first book of Kings!

The book of the prophet Zechariah provides a sort of interpretive key for the life and ministry of Jesus. It tells us what the Messiah would do and what kind of figure he would be. The passage that we read from Zechariah for Mass this week emphasizes that the Messiah, curiously enough, would be "pierced." In our Gospel, Peter correctly identifies Jesus as the Messiah, but then he (and we) are given a lesson in what that means: the Son of Man must be rejected, persecuted and put to death. Jesus the Messiah saves the world precisely by being killed. To understand that is to understand everything about Christian faith.

Paul tells us that whenever we eat the body and drink the blood of the Lord, we proclaim his death until he comes. This means that the Eucharist involves a wonderful compression of time, past and future meeting dynamically in the present. When we gather around the Lord's table now, we call to mind the breakthrough moment of the Paschal Mystery and we anticipate the culminating moment of the end of time. In doing this, we charge the present with meaning and purpose.