Bishop Barron’s Sunday Sermons - Catholic Preaching and Homilies

Bishop Robert Barron

A weekly homily podcast from Bishop Robert Barron, produced by Word on Fire Catholic Ministries.

  • 14 minutes 47 seconds
    Which Kingdom Are You In?

    Friends, we come to the end of the liturgical year with the Feast of Christ the King, where we meditate upon the kingly reign or rule of Christ. Now, we in the modern liberal West have a hard time with kings; we like democratic polities. The United States emerged out of a great rebellion against the king. But we should get over this modern hang-up, because kingship—from Adam all the way up to Christ—is a basic biblical idea. And the importance of today’s feast is that it forces a decision about which king we follow.

    20 November 2024, 2:28 pm
  • 14 minutes 30 seconds
    A New World Unveiled

    Friends, we're coming toward the end of the liturgical year, and as is typical, the Church gives us readings of an apocalyptic nature dealing with the end times. “Apocalypse” means “unveiling,” and what’s being unveiled in our readings is the emergence of a new world—not so much in the literal, cosmic sense as in the sense of how we navigate and understand the world. Something has fallen apart; the old world has given way. 

    12 November 2024, 6:20 pm
  • 14 minutes 28 seconds
    Trusting God in Dire Straits

    Friends, our first reading is that wonderful story of Elijah and the widow of Zarephath, which is a kind of hidden gem in the Old Testament. Like so many of the stories in the Bible, it is very understated, but chock full of spiritual meaning. And it has to do with how we respond—and the strange and surprising ways God might respond to us— when things are toughest.

    5 November 2024, 1:59 pm
  • 14 minutes 51 seconds
    The Highest Good Is God Alone

    Friends, the readings for this Thirty-first Sunday in Ordinary Time take us to very holy ground. In the first reading, taken from the sixth chapter of Deuteronomy, we hear the “shema,” a prayer fundamental to Jewish theology and spirituality. And in the Gospel, when one of the scribes asks Jesus which is the greatest commandment, the Son of God, the Torah made flesh, recites the same prayer. We can’t get any more sacred or any clearer indication of how we should govern our lives.

    29 October 2024, 9:11 pm
  • 15 minutes 22 seconds
    Answering God’s Call

    Friends, all three readings for this Thirtieth Sunday of Ordinary Time have a golden thread running through them, which is the idea of the call—of the primacy of God’s action in the life of salvation. Whenever we start thinking that this is our own ego project and that we are in command, we are ipso facto on the wrong path.

    23 October 2024, 8:09 am
  • 14 minutes 37 seconds
    What Real Power Looks Like

    Friends, our Gospel this Sunday is taken from the tenth chapter of Mark, and it is high-octane spiritual business. Something pivotal is being laid out for us in this passage, and it has to do with power, suffering, and a willingness to go where Jesus goes.

    15 October 2024, 6:48 pm
  • 14 minutes 55 seconds
    What Do You Ask God For?

    Friends, for this Twenty-eighth Sunday of Ordinary Time, our first reading from the marvelous book of Wisdom presents an old biblical trope: If you were to ask God for something, or if God were to come to you and say he will give you whatever you want—what would you ask for? This is a really clarifying question. And while many things might come to mind, the answer of the paradigmatic wisdom figure is instructive.

    7 October 2024, 6:11 pm
  • 14 minutes 43 seconds
    The Biblical Vision of the Family

    Friends, the first reading from Genesis and the Gospel from Mark this week are of great importance. They have to do with what we call Christian anthropology—the biblical understanding of who we are—and most specifically, in relation to marriage and family. This question of how we define ourselves is of course on the minds of many people today, and the readings, in a beautifully compact way, bring out the Christian answer.

    1 October 2024, 2:54 pm
  • 14 minutes 1 second
    Whoever Is Not Against Us Is For Us

    Friends, the first reading and Gospel this Sunday have to do with the Church at war with itself. The devil is the scatterer, the divider, and one of his favorite tricks is to take the Church—which is meant to be an instrument of the Gospel in the world—and to turn us against one another.

    25 September 2024, 10:24 am
  • 14 minutes 39 seconds
    The Ladder Doesn’t Matter

    Friends, why was the story of Jesus with the little children, versions of which appear in the three synoptic Gospels, so vividly remembered by the first Christians? I think they intuited that it got very close to the heart of Jesus’ teaching. The way Mark sets up his account of this story in our Gospel for this weekend is frankly funny, and it’s an example of the disciples completely missing the point of everything. 

    17 September 2024, 4:37 pm
  • 14 minutes 52 seconds
    Faith Without Works Is Dead

    Friends, “fools rush in where angels fear to tread”—and this week, I am going to go once more into the issue of faith and works, which has been dividing Western Christianity since the Reformation. Our second reading from the Letter of James is a key text on this issue, and its metaphor of healing—together with Paul’s forensic metaphor—orient us to the Catholic view of justification.

    10 September 2024, 7:56 pm
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