Bishop Barron’s Sunday Sermons - Catholic Preaching and Homilies

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.

Jonah hears God's invitation and refuses to cooperate. But God's providence is universal and his demand is absolute. When he has gone through the discipline of the belly of the fish, Jonah is ready. At his word, the entire city of Nineveh repents. When we hear our call to Nineveh, let us not resist!

The young prophet Samuel listens to the Lord's voice, seeks guidance from an elder, and then disposes himself to do what the Lord demands. In this he becomes a model of the disciple: the one who hears and obeys.

At the beginning of his public ministry, Jesus, the sinless one, stands shoulder to shoulder with sinners in the muddy waters of the Jordan River. Jesus' whole purpose is to go the lost, the sick, the forgotten, the sinful in order to bring the light of God's love.