Bishop Barron’s Sunday Sermons - Catholic Preaching and Homilies

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.

Friends, our Gospel for today is the evocative scene of Jesus healing a man who cannot hear and cannot speak. This man is beautifully symbolic of many in our culture today: we don’t listen to God, and therefore we can’t speak clearly about God. To us, as to him, Jesus says, “Ephphatha!”—be opened to the Word of God!

Friends, as Americans, we have a very ambiguous relationship to law. On the one hand, we are a nation of independently minded people; we don’t like the law imposing itself on us. At the same time—let’s face it—we are a hyper-litigious society. We see the same ambiguity about law—both its beauty and its shadow side—in our three readings today.

Friends, we come now to the close of this great discourse of Jesus in the sixth chapter of John, where we see the aftereffects of his teaching on the Real Presence. The Eucharist is a standing or falling point of Christianity, and the question Jesus poses to the Twelve is posed to every one of us today: Do you also want to leave over this teaching? Do you reject it, or do you accept it?

Friends, we continue reading from the sixth chapter of John, this pivotal section of the New Testament where John lays out his Eucharistic theology. And we come today to the rhetorical high point of this discourse, where things really come to a head. It is the ground of the doctrine of the Real Presence: Jesus is not simply symbolically present in the Eucharist; he’s really, truly, and substantially present under the signs of bread and wine.

Friends, we’re continuing our reading of the sixth chapter of the Gospel of John, which is all about the Eucharist. And here’s my take on our reading for today: A long trip by car or plane can be uncomfortable, even overwhelming. But we’re heading somewhere else; we’re on a journey. And on a long journey, you have to find sustenance to keep going.

Friends, in the midst of our country’s great Eucharistic Revival, we continue our reading of the sixth chapter of the Gospel of John. And this week, I want to reflect on a line that names something so spiritually basic: “Do not work for food that perishes but for the food that endures for eternal life.”

Friends, this Sunday we begin five weeks of Gospel readings from the sixth chapter of John, which is all about the Eucharist. Jesus will get into a lengthy discourse about the Eucharist, but it commences narratively with the familiar story of the multiplication of the loaves, which is an iconic presentation of the Mass.

Friends the readings for this Sixteenth Sunday in Ordinary Time are interwoven with each other in a very interesting way. I want to start with the first reading from Jeremiah, then look at the Gospel from Mark, and then circle back to the second reading from Paul’s Letter to the Ephesians, which I think sheds the most light on the thematics here—namely, God’s desire to shepherd his people, and the arrival of the shepherd in Christ.

Friends, on this Fifteenth Sunday in Ordinary Time, our Gospel from the sixth chapter of Mark is Jesus sending the Twelve out on mission. These are the very earliest moments of the Church—in a way, the “pre-Church”—so it’s important for us to pay attention to what the Lord tells them.

Friends, on this Fourteenth Sunday of Ordinary Time, our second reading is from Paul’s Second Letter to the Corinthians. The focus of the reading is “a thorn in the flesh” that was given to Paul “to beat me, to keep me from being too elated.” What was it? We don’t know, but whatever it was, it wasn’t trivial. We all have something like this—some physical, psychological, or spiritual suffering that’s chronic and deeply troubling. Yet this struggle with the thorn in the flesh is very often what brings us back to God.

Friends, there’s something Hemingway-esque about Mark’s Gospel—something very direct and uncomplicated. But in another sense, he shows great literary sophistication, and you see it especially in this famous passage for today: the story of the daughter of Jairus, which is interrupted by the story of the hemorrhaging woman. Of course we read these as marvelous miracle stories of Jesus, but they’re meant to speak of the miracle of grace that still goes on in the life of the Church today.

Friends, our Gospel for today is Mark’s account of the stilling of the sea. We know the basic structure of the story: Jesus is in the boat with the disciples; when a storm kicks up, he’s asleep in the stern. The disciples are panicking and wake Jesus up, and once he’s awakened, he calms the storm. Then he says, “Do you not yet have faith?” What I'm going to do is give you three separate interpretations of this story, all of which have come up out of the ancient Church, and all of which shed light on the spiritual life.

Friends, people of faith just see things differently. They see what the nonbeliever sees—they read history and watch the news and see what’s going on in the world—but they see more than that. They see the world according to God’s plans and purposes—an ample and even peculiar vision that can often make spiritual people seem a little crazy. All three of our readings this Sunday are touching on this theme.

Friends, we return now to Ordinary Time, and this Sunday, the Church gives us such a fundamentally important reading from the third chapter of the book of Genesis, which is about the fall. To return to this story—written, under God’s inspiration, with stunning perceptiveness—is to discover again the nature and basic dynamics of sin.

Friends, we come to the great Feast of Corpus Christi—the Body and Blood of Christ. This year, as the Church in the US is going through a lengthy Eucharistic Revival, it’s good for us once again to turn to this greatest of sacraments. What I want to do today is to talk about a spiritual practice that has become very dear to me in the course of my life—and that is Eucharistic Adoration.

Friends, we come once again to Trinity Sunday. The Church has reflected very deeply on who God is, and this great doctrine of the Trinity has emerged from that speculation. What I want to do is give you, appropriately enough, three ways of approaching this profound mystery.

Friends, we come to the Feast of Pentecost, the great celebration of the Holy Spirit. I want to focus on our second reading from the fifth chapter of St. Paul’s Letter to the Galatians, which I’ve used for years in spiritual direction. What you find there are what Paul calls “the fruit of the Spirit,” which he contrasts with “the works of the flesh.” Maybe you’re struggling and wondering, “What should I do? What path do I take?” Whatever is giving rise to the fruits of the Spirit in you is the path you want—and whatever is giving rise to the works of the flesh, stay away from.

Friends, today we come to the wonderful Feast of the Ascension of the Lord. Like the disciples in our first reading, we often want to ask the Lord, “When is all of this going to come to fruition? What’s it all about? When is all of this going to make sense?” Reasonable enough questions. And we hear the same answer: It’s not for you to worry about. Rather, get to work! In the Ascension, the Lord moves to a higher dimension and then sends the Holy Spirit at Pentecost, so that we can be empowered to do Christ’s work in the world.

Friends, we’re getting very close to Pentecost, the great feast of the descent of the Spirit. And on this Sixth Sunday of Easter, the Church gives us three readings that are hinting at the Holy Spirit—a kind of foretaste of that descent.

Friends, the Lord Jesus Christ is not a teacher from a distant age, not someone from long ago we remember fondly, not a moral exemplar; rather, he is a field of force. We don’t just listen to him or imitate him; we live in him. Our Gospel for this Fifth Sunday of Easter gives us one of the most beautiful and powerful images for this truth: Jesus is the vine, and we are the branches. But there is a dark side to this wonderful organic imagery: the Father is the vine grower, and he is going to prune away all that is in us that is preventing the life of Christ from manifesting itself.

Friends, we come to the Fourth Sunday of Easter, known as Good Shepherd Sunday. Jesus says in the Gospel, “I am the good shepherd. A good shepherd lays down his life for the sheep.” What is it about that image that sings to us across the ages, from the pages of the Bible to the present day? What I want to do is reflect on this image of the shepherd—first, in relation to Jesus, then second, in relation to leadership in the life of the Church.

Friends, this week, on the Third Sunday of Easter, we have a passage from that magnificent twenty-fourth chapter of Luke—one of the appearances of the risen Christ to the Apostles. When we’re talking about the Resurrection, we’re talking about the central point of Christian faith, the hinge upon which the whole of Christianity turns. So to understand what we’re dealing with here is exceptionally important. What I want to do is reflect on the different views about what happens to us when we die that were floating around the eastern Mediterranean in the first century—and how none of them is on offer here.

Friends, on the Second Sunday of Easter, we have the inexhaustible reading from the twentieth chapter of John—one of the accounts of the Resurrection appearances of Jesus. These are in many ways the core texts of our Christian faith, so it behooves us to spend some careful time looking at them. This week, I want to reflect on the shalom (peace) that the risen Christ offers his disciples—and the struggle of one disciple, who was not present, to believe.

Friends, a very happy and blessed Easter! We come to the climax of the Church’s year, the feast of feasts, the very reason for being of Christianity. Everything in Christian life centers around the Resurrection. And the Church gives us, every year, the account of Easter morning from the Gospel of John. I want to bring out just one feature that John especially draws attention to—namely, the burial cloths left behind in the tomb. These strange and wonderful cloths that opened the door to faith long ago could perhaps do the same thing today.

Friends, we have the great privilege on Palm Sunday of reading from one of the Passion narratives, and this year, we read from the Gospel of Mark—the very first one written. But what I want to do today is something a little bit different: instead of putting the focus on Jesus, I want to focus on a series of people around him as they react in different ways to the events of the Passion, putting ourselves in the scene. Who do we identify with in this story as Jesus comes toward his death?

Friends, on this Fifth Sunday of Lent, we hear one of the most pivotal passages in the Old Testament: Jeremiah 31:31. Jeremiah knew the long Israelite history of covenant and blood sacrifice, but he prophesies, “The days are coming, says the LORD, when I will make a new covenant with the house of Israel and the house of Judah.” This passage will find its fulfillment about six centuries later at a Passover supper, where a young rabbi—the covenant in person—offers his own lifeblood for his people to drink.

Friends, the Gospel on this Fourth Sunday of Lent includes one of the most famous verses in the Bible: “For God so loved the world that he gave his only Son, so that everyone who believes in him might not perish but might have eternal life” (John 3:16). In many ways, this verse is the Gospel in miniature. But we can isolate this line too much and miss the real import of it when we don’t attend to what happens right before—namely, Jesus’ reference to the serpent in the desert.

Friends, on this Third Sunday of Lent, the Church asks us to look at one of the great texts in the Old Testament—namely, the Ten Commandments from the book of Exodus. Lent is a time of getting back to basics spiritually, and walking through the Ten Commandments is a great way to do it. Go back to this text in Exodus, commit the Commandments to memory if you haven’t, and use them to examine your conscience.

Friends, we come now to the Second Sunday of Lent, and we’re on both dangerous and very holy ground with the first reading from the twenty-second chapter of Genesis. The ancient Israelites referred to it as the “Akedah,” which means the “binding”: Abraham binds and is ready to sacrifice Isaac at God’s command. It’s hard to imagine another text in the Old Testament that has stirred up more puzzlement and opposition. I am with Søren Kierkegaard: if you don’t experience “fear and trembling” having read this text, you have not been paying attention. And it’s naming something of absolute centrality in the spiritual life.

Friends, we come now to the holy season of Lent. The Gospel for this First Sunday of Lent is Mark’s laconic version of the temptation of Jesus in the desert. Mark does not give us the details we find in Matthew and Luke, but we do hear this mysterious observation: “He was among wild beasts, and the angels ministered to him.” We are given here a kind of icon of the union of the spiritual and the material, the soul and the body, in the human being—both the glory and the agony of human life. And a really good way to pray through Lent is reflecting on our own struggles in light of that icon.

Friends, this week, our Gospel is the marvelous passage from Mark about Jesus curing a leper. These moments of healing stayed so deeply in the imaginations of the first Christians. What do we make of this particular healing of a leper? Let’s look at it from three angles: life on the margins of society, the shame of our own sin, and the absence from right worship.

Friends, the Gospel of Mark is a fascinating literary work. St. Mark seems to write in a breathless, staccato, even primitive manner, but the deeper you look, the more his Gospel appears iconic. He presents scene after scene in a very concentrated way, telling us some rather deep truths about the faith. Our Gospel for today from the first chapter is a good example of this. We see on clear display here what Pope Benedict described as the three essential tasks of the Church: it worships God, it serves the poor, and it evangelizes.

Friends, the first reading from Deuteronomy today is of signal importance. Moses, speaking to the people before they enter the Promised Land, says, “A prophet like me will the LORD, your God, raise up for you from among your own kin; to him you shall listen.” These words haunted the mind of Israel. Moses was the supreme authority; there was no figure in the Old Testament more important. Who could be greater than Moses? We find the answer in the Gospel: Jesus of Nazareth, the Holy One of God, who speaks on his own authority.

Friends, though the book of Jonah is only a few pages long, there is something inexhaustible about it. It’s a biblical commonplace that God speaks to certain people and gives them missions, as he does with Jonah in our first reading. But God also speaks to us all the time, precisely in the voice of our conscience. Do you listen to the voice of God or not? Do you listen to what your conscience is telling you or not? If you do, you become a vehicle of grace for yourself and for all those around you. If you don’t, chaos ensues.

Friends, we commence now with the Second Sunday in Ordinary Time, and our first reading is one of my favorites in the Old Testament: the account, in the First Book of Samuel, of the call of Samuel, who as a young man hears the voice of the Lord for the first time. In the history of salvation, in the lives of the saints, occasionally God really does speak in a voice that can be heard, but I think what’s being described here is the word of God in the voice of the conscience, and what to do when we hear it.

Friends, we come to the wonderful Feast of the Epiphany and the great account in the Gospel of Matthew of the journey of the three magi. This marvelous, puzzling story, which has so beguiled the poets, artists, and preachers over the centuries, bears a very profound theological truth, and it has to do with the relationship of the national and the transnational.

Friends, we come to the wonderful Feast of the Holy Family. Over the years on this feast day, I’ve certainly preached on the dynamics of the Holy Family, on Mary, and of course on the Lord, but I don't think I’ve ever focused on St. Joseph. Well, that ends today. Let’s look at four dimensions to the holiness of this greatest male saint in the history of the Church.

Friends, we come to the fourth and final Sunday of Advent, falling this year on the very day before Christmas. And today, the Church invites us in our readings to think about David. Jesus is the fulfillment of the Torah, the fulfillment of the temple, the fulfillment of all of the longings of the prophets and patriarchs of Israel. And he is, perhaps above all, the new and definitive David, the King and Priest who will “rule over the house of Jacob forever.”

Friends, for this Third Sunday of Advent, the Church asks us to focus on John the Baptist, who of course is one of the great Advent figures. It’s as though John stands on a kind of frontier or border: all of the human longing for God, in all its various expressions over the centuries and across the cultures, is summed up in this man. “Among those born of women there has been none greater than John the Baptist.” Yet what does he say? “I am the voice of one crying out in the desert, ‘make straight the way of the Lord.’” At the limit of human religiosity, summing up all that we can bring to the table, this figure looks to another.

Friends, great writers, from Aristotle to Shakespeare to Melville, put a lot into their opening line, which often sets the tone for the whole work. This week we have the privilege of hearing the very opening of the Gospel of Mark, which, by scholarly consensus, is the first of the Gospels written: “The beginning of the gospel of Jesus Christ the Son of God.” In the manner of those great writers, this line matters a lot; in fact, every bit of it matters. And what sounds to us like familiar spiritual language was, in the first century, an edgy proclamation of the true Emperor to the powers that be.

Friends, we come to the First Sunday of Advent—the liturgical new year. I've said this before, but Advent is a time to get back to basics. Can I suggest we start with that familiar Advent hymn, “O Come, O Come, Emmanuel”? Until we get into the spiritual space opened up by that hymn, we are not understanding Advent—and more to it, we are not understanding Christianity. We are beggars asking Emmanuel—“God with us”—to come and “ransom captive Israel.” You're in chains; you’re held captive. What can you do to save yourself? Nothing—except to cry out, “Come, come, someone, save me!”

Friends, Christ is the King of all things. His rule is characterized not by totalitarianism or despotism, but rather by loving kindness and sacrifice. He constantly reaches out his hands to defend the weak and sick, going to the limits of godforsakenness to bring back those who have wandered. We can cooperate with our King by being his ministers of mercy to the world.

Friends, we must develop a theology and spirituality of work. Meaningful labor awakens our desire to collaborate in God’s creativity. Viewing work in this way—as spiritual and moral action—conquers our melancholy, gives us dignity, and brings us into unity with the purposes of the Lord.

Friends, there’s a great temptation for us to turn the Lord into a distant spiritual entity or a difficult moral taskmaster. We incorrectly believe that we have to crawl our way to the divine by our own heroism, merit, and effort. But this is not the case. In actuality, God, in his wisdom, hastens to make himself known. He reveals himself to us, even before we’ve begun to see. In fact, our seeking is predicated upon the fact that we’ve already been found. To understand this is to understand the Bible as the story of God’s quest for us.

Friends, there’s only one real sadness in life—not to be a saint. But what does it mean to follow this path of righteousness? To follow the will of God, and God wills that we habitually direct our actions and thoughts to the good of others. Jesus says blessed are the merciful, the peacemakers, the pure in heart. Following Christ’s Sermon on the Mount leads to our beatitude; living in this way leads to sainthood.

Friends, the Books of Moses teach that the three types of Israelite law—liturgical law, ritual law, and moral law—shape and direct God’s people toward holiness and purity. While the liturgical laws have been carried over and the ritual laws largely set aside, the moral laws remain unchanged, for they represent those great abiding intuitions by which our lives should be structured.

Friends, a great theme of the Bible is that of God’s chosen people. At the same time, we also see that God’s salvific plan has to do with all of humanity—and indeed with all of creation. God chooses Israel—and the New Israel, the Church—precisely for the sake of the whole world. Remembering this helps us keep the delicate balance between bland spiritual relativism and a dangerous religious tribalism.

Friends, the mountain is a great image throughout the Bible. It is the place where we go up and where God comes down to meet us. Today’s first reading from Isaiah orients us to three holy mountains of the Lord: first, the historical Mount Zion; second, its fulfillment in the heavenly Mount Zion; and third, a sort of “middle mountain” of the Mass, where we raise our minds and hearts to God, who comes to gather us, to speak his word, and to feed us.

Friends, in biblical imagery, the vineyard symbolizes the people of God. The Lord nourishes us as our caretaker, but he desires (even demands) that we bear good fruit. The Mass, the Eucharist, the teaching office of the Church, priests and bishops—through these means and through the Church, God cultivates his vineyard.

Friends, our own wickedness and virtue belong to oneself. Though our communities and background stories affect our mind and will, nevertheless, the individual stands alone in the presence of God. We show God and the world who we are by the integrity of our moral acts. What we do defines who we are, and therefore we must cultivate the moral dimension of our life to avoid ethical calamity.

Friends, the parable at the heart of our Gospel today from Matthew 20 is one of those passages in the New Testament that really bothers people. It proves that this parable is not just conveying correct information about God; it is reaching into our souls and doing spiritual work, shining light upon a certain darkness in us that resists him. And in this case, the darkness is a false view of what heaven is all about.

Friends, today in our second reading, St. Paul says, “None of us lives for oneself, and no one dies for oneself. For if we live, we live for the Lord, and if we die, we die for the Lord; so then, whether we live or die, we are the Lord's.” In many ways, the whole Bible, the whole of revelation, is summed up in this statement. Yet everything in our culture militates against this: it’s all about your life, your choice, finding your voice, asserting your prerogatives. When we live in this little world, we remain stuck in a kind of permanent adolescence; when we live for the Lord, we enter into the adventure of being truly human.

Friends, they say that fools rush in where angels fear to tread. Well, today I’m going to rush in to some stormy waters by looking at the central issue of the Protestant Reformation: this issue of faith and works, or faith and the law. Martin Luther famously said that what he discovered in Paul is that we are justified or saved by faith alone. But why does the same Paul, in our second reading, say that "one who loves another has fulfilled the law"? The witness of the New Testament is richly complex on this question, and the Catholic position honors that richness and complexity.

Friends, our first reading for this weekend is from the twentieth chapter of Jeremiah. There is so much spiritual wisdom in Jeremiah, but more than any of the other prophets, we come to know his personality and his life. And in this passage, all the texture of being a prophet is on display: both the terror on every side and a fire burning in the heart—both the opposition of those who refuse to hear the Word and the irresistible desire to announce it.

Friends, I do a lot of debating and dialoguing with agnostics and atheists, and very often, when they attack the faith, it's along the lines of: How could an all-knowing and all-good God allow (fill in the blank)? Why does he allow childhood leukemia, or natural catastrophes, or animal suffering? Much of the objection hinges upon the puzzle that is proposed by the existence of God. And we hear a classic answer from within the heart of our tradition today in our second reading from St. Paul to the Romans.

Friends, our Gospel today from Matthew 15, the famous story of Jesus and the Syrophoenician woman, is one of those Gospels that bothers and unnerves people. How should we read it? It is not that Jesus was grouchy after a tough day of ministry, and this plucky woman speaks truth to power to get what she wants. We are meant to read it in a much more subtle way. This story is driving at an issue that is central to the Bible—namely, the relationship between Israel and the other nations.

Friends, our Gospel for today is Matthew’s account of the calming of the storm and the walking on the water. This is an event that reached very deeply into the hearts and minds of the first Christians: we can find an account of it in all four Gospels. And the iconic representation in the Gospels shows us the theological and spiritual implications of this real event. It is an image of the Church, the barque of Peter, passing through the stormy times of life.

Friends, it’s a wonderful grace that the Feast of the Transfiguration this year falls on Sunday. The first reading the Church gives us from the seventh chapter of the book of Daniel might strike you as curious, but it’s very apropos. Daniel has a vision of four beasts rising from the sea, symbolic of four worldly kingdoms, each one being destroyed in preparation for a final kingdom—the kingdom of God. In Jesus’ time, they read these four kingdoms as Babylon, Persia, Greece, and Rome. If you think this is just wild speculation that had nothing to do with Jesus, think again.

Friends, our first reading is from the First Book of Kings, and it's one of my favorite passages in the entire Old Testament. If you're going on a retreat, spending a Holy Hour, or just wanting to get in touch with the Lord at the end of the day, it's a wonderful little passage to focus on. The setting is the early days of the reign of King Solomon, and the question it raises is this: If you could ask God for anything, what would you ask for?

Friends, we are reading during these weeks of summer from the thirteenth chapter of Matthew’s Gospel, which contains many of the great parables of Jesus. But I want to focus just on one today because it’s so rich both theologically and spiritually: the parable of the wheat and the weeds. Jesus’ story shows us how evil, by its very nature, is a corruption of the good. It is a parasite—and we need requisite care and patience in dealing with it.

Friends, our first reading and our Gospel today are about the word of God, both from God’s side as he speaks, and then from our side as we receive. God has spoken through creation, the prophets, the Scriptures—and, in the fullness of time, the very Word of God. If you open your mind and heart to the power of God’s word, it will change you.

Friends, the Gospel for this weekend from the eleventh chapter of Matthew contains a passage that has been called “Matthew’s most precious pearl.” “No one knows the Son except the Father,” Jesus exclaims, “and no one knows the Father except the Son and anyone to whom the Son wishes to reveal him.” We are on very holy ground here because we are being invited into the very inner life of God.

Friends, there is no religious figure anywhere in the religions or philosophies of the world who is stranger, more demanding, more relentless, and more unnerving than Jesus. And therefore the religion attached to Jesus is the strangest of them all. Exhibit A is our Gospel from Matthew 10. What Jesus says to his Apostles about himself, no other spiritual teacher would say. And you can’t be neutral about it: you have make a decision about Jesus.

Friends, the readings for today are really magnificent, and they are all about something central to the spiritual life—namely, fear. Years ago, I was on a retreat, and the retreat director said that there are two basic questions always to ask. First; Deep down, what do you want? Second: Ultimately, what are you afraid of? In a way, answering those two questions will tell you everything you need to know about yourself, spiritually speaking.

Friends, as we resume Ordinary Time, I want to talk to you about vocations—specifically, vocations to the priesthood. Our Gospel for today from Matthew shows us the call of the priest: to be a shepherd of lost sheep, a warrior against unclean spirits, and a healer of sin-sick souls—one that teaches and preaches and proclaims the kingdom of God. This summons from Christ has been the greatest joy in my life. If you are feeling the call, don’t ignore it; follow it.

Friends, we come now to the marvelous Feast of Corpus Christi, of the Body and Blood of Christ. What has been on my mind a lot recently is the famous story of the feeding of the five thousand—the only miracle, with the exception of the Resurrection, recounted in all four Gospels. Jesus multiplying the loaves and fishes to the feeding of this great crowd must have made a massive impression on the first Christians. With this feast in mind, let’s look at the earliest version of this story in the Gospel of Mark, because every part of it is worthy of meditation.

Friends, today we come to Trinity Sunday, which has been called “the preacher’s nightmare.” But as you probably know from previous sermons of mine, I don’t agree with that at all. I think every Sunday is Trinity Sunday. The Trinity names what is most fundamental and basic in our whole theology and spirituality, and we should rejoice in talking about it! Today, let’s look at the Trinity through three lenses: the words of Scripture, an analogy from St. Augustine, and the viscerally real “so what” of salvation.

Friends, we come to the great Feast of Pentecost—the feast, par excellence, of the Holy Spirit. A critique of the Western Church is that we don’t speak sufficiently of the third person of the Trinity, and there might be some truth to that. I’d like to follow Vatican II in trying to bring the Holy Spirit very much into the forefront. Our readings today show us the great power of the Spirit—a power that unleashes great saints, fiery speech, and a liberating unity. Surrender your life over to the Holy Spirit, and—trust me—you will tap into this source of power to change things for the better.

Friends, right at the end of the Easter season and in anticipation of Pentecost, we come to the great Feast of the Ascension of the Lord. We should do a theological reflection on this feast—how we should and shouldn’t understand the Ascension, and what it means for Christ’s work in the world—because it is key to understanding the dynamics of the Christian life.

Friends, on this Sixth Sunday of Easter, the Church gives us a kind of foretaste of Pentecost. In all three readings, we hear descriptions of the work of the Holy Spirit—the animating principle of the Mystical Body. What are the signs that the Holy Spirit is at work? Let’s look at five of them.

Friends, there is an enormously important line in our first reading today that we might just pass over: “The number of the disciples in Jerusalem increased greatly; even a large group of priests were becoming obedient to the faith.” Priests were so important in Jewish religious life, and these priests knew that Jesus was the fulfillment of the whole tradition of temple sacrifice. We, all the baptized, do not just admire Christ’s supreme priesthood from afar; we participate in it.

Friends, for this fourth Sunday of Easter, we have a magnificent first reading from the Acts of the Apostles. It’s one of Peter's great kerygmatic speeches—the kerygma means the basic proclamation of the faith—and a master class in evangelization. Christianity has become so commonplace for so many of us; we think being a Christian just means being a nice person. But listen now as this chief of the Apostles, this friend of Jesus, begins to preach with fire. This is the energy that should belong across the ages to Christian evangelical preaching!

Friends, we come to this Third Sunday of Easter, and our Gospel is Luke’s account of the disciples on the road to Emmaus. This masterpiece is a summation of the spiritual life, and it starts with two disciples of Jesus walking the wrong way.

Friends, we continue our celebration of the Easter season on this Second Sunday of Easter, Divine Mercy Sunday. Mercy, St. Thomas Aquinas says, is compassion in regard to someone else’s suffering; thus, God’s mercy is his compassion reaching out to us precisely in our suffering. Keep that in mind as we walk through the Gospel passage for this week from John: the extraordinary account of the risen Jesus appearing to his disciples. Christ has been sent into the world as an agent of God’s mercy, answering our sin and woundedness with forgiving love. And the same Christ breathes on us, giving us the Holy Spirit, and sends us into the world with the same mission.

Friends, Happy Easter! Christ is risen—Alleluia, Alleluia! Recently, I had a public conversation with the popular historian Tom Holland. Someone from the crowd asked him, “What’s the call of our time?” and he said, “Let Christianity be weird.” When I was coming of age, there was a tendency to reduce Christianity to just another vague mysticism or moral system. If that’s all Christianity is, who cares? I’m with Tom Holland: let Christianity be weird, because Christianity is weird. And a lot of the weirdness focuses on the thing we celebrate today: the Resurrection of Jesus from the dead.

Friends, on Palm Sunday, the culminating point of Lent, the Church reads from one of the great Passion narratives from the synoptic Gospels. But I want to look at the second reading today—a passage from the second chapter of Paul’s Letter to the Philippians, the heart of which is a hymn or poem. These words go back to the very beginning of Christianity, and they serve as a beautiful summary statement of the faith. Paul is reflecting on the downward trajectory of the Son of God—all the way down into death itself, even death on a cross.

Friends, on this Fifth Sunday of Lent, our Gospel is John’s story of Jesus raising Lazarus from the dead. Let’s face it: we are all haunted by death. No matter what we accomplish in this life, we know that it will all be swallowed up in the end. The fear of death broods over the whole of life. But does death have the final say?

Friends, on this fourth Sunday of Lent, our Gospel is one of the most magnificent stories in the Gospel of John: the healing of the man born blind. John is a theological master, of course, but also a literary master, and this story is beautifully crafted as a sort of icon of the spiritual life. This is not only a story about something that Jesus did; at a deeper level, this is a story about all of us.

Friends, on this Third Sunday of Lent, we are again getting back to spiritual basics, and the first reading from Exodus and the Gospel from John both focus on the symbol of water. Water in the Bible can be a negative symbol of destruction, but it can also be a positive symbol of life—not just physical life but the divine life of grace. Water for thirsty bodies symbolizes the water of grace for thirsty souls.

The readings for the Second Sunday of Lent brought to mind my good friend Bishop David O’Connell, who was killed last month. He was one of the most Christ-like people I have ever known—a man of deep spiritual conviction, with a profound sense of the power of the Holy Spirit. Like Abraham, he followed the Lord’s call from his homeland of Ireland to serve in the United States, working among the poor and with members of gangs. He called those he served to a deep life of prayer and spiritual transformation in Christ, a mystery revealed in the Gospel account of the Transfiguration.

Friends, we come now to the holy season of Lent, our preparation for Easter. I've often said that Lent is a time to get back to basics. It’s like when you're starting the football season and have to get back to fundamentals of the game, or when you're getting back to playing golf after a long winter away and have to remember the fundamentals of the swing. So in the spiritual order there are certain fundamental truths, and the readings for this first Sunday of Lent are especially good at getting us in touch with them.

Friends, we continue our reading of the marvelous Sermon on the Mount. We cannot read this sermon as one ethical teaching among many. Everyone from Plato and Aristotle all the way up through Kant and Hegel have a moral philosophy—an understanding of how humans ought to behave. This is precisely the wrong way to read the Sermon on the Mount, because no one—ancient or modern, religious or nonreligious—sounds like Jesus. His radical command to love as God loves, in fact, sounds a little bit crazy.

Friends, we have the privilege of continuing to read from the Sermon on the Mount, where Jesus himself lays out his basic teaching. What we find today is Jesus as the new Moses. Like Moses, he goes up on a mountain, and he receives and then gives a new, intensified Law. Jesus wants the corrective power of the Law to go beyond merely the behavioral level and to get down to the level of the heart. We are not called to spiritual mediocrity; we are called to be saints!

Friends, we are reading from the marvelous Sermon on the Mount in the Gospel of Matthew. This week, we hear Jesus compare his disciples to three things: the salt of the earth, the light of the world, and a city set on a mountain. What do all three of these things have in common? They do not exist for themselves; rather, they exist for something else. How is your Christianity impacting the world around you—making it better and getting in the way of evil and wickedness?

Friends, our Gospel for this Sunday is one of the great passages of the New Testament—namely, the Beatitudes from the fifth chapter of Matthew. "Beatitudo" just means happiness, and the one thing we all want is to be happy. Well, here is the Son of God telling us how—so let’s pay close attention!

Friends, this liturgical year, we are reading from the Gospel of Matthew, and Matthew is written precisely for a Jewish audience. This is why, over and over again, we find Matthew putting Jesus within an Old Testament context. And in our readings for this weekend, the Church juxtaposes a prophecy from Isaiah with its fulfillment in Matthew: “Land of Zebulun and land of Naphtali, the way to the sea, beyond the Jordan, Galilee of the Gentiles, the people who sit in darkness have seen a great light, on those dwelling in a land overshadowed by death light has arisen.” This may not mean much to us today, but Matthew’s audience of first-century Jews knew exactly what he meant.

Friends, we return this Sunday to Ordinary Time, and the Church gives us a rather extraordinary reading from the first chapter of the Gospel of John. Seeing Jesus, John the Baptist says something that we repeat at every single Mass: "Behold, the Lamb of God, who takes away the sin of the world." Many Christians don’t know what this phrase means; they think that it has to do with Jesus’ gentleness or innocence. But John is drawing our attention here to who Jesus was—and the Good News of what he did for us on the cross.

Friends, we come today to the Feast of the Epiphany. The word “epiphany” comes from the Greek meaning “intense appearance.” It is something that not only gets our attention but also reveals something of enormous significance. For the wise men of course, it was first the star; but the real epiphany was the baby King. We should be attentive in a similar way to these moments of breakthrough that speak to us of God—and we should respond.

Friends, on this Solemnity of the Blessed Virgin Mary, the Mother of God, we hear three significant words in the Gospel from Luke: haste, astonished, and treasured. If God has broken into your life in some decisive way, if you’ve been given your mission, then don’t about what the world says: move, act, go. When God manifests himself, the right response is astonishment. And then savor, treasure, reflect upon these astonishing things in your heart. In all these ways, we honor Mary, the Mother of God.

Merry Christmas friends! As you gather today with family and friends, it is likely that someone, at some point, will bring in a newborn. And everybody will want to see the baby. The whole room will stop whatever they are doing to see this child. There is something irresistibly charming about babies; they bring out the best in us and call forth love from us. Well, at the center of our Christmas celebration is a strange, astonishing fact: God became a baby. The all-powerful Creator of the universe, the reason why there is something rather than nothing, became a baby too weak even to raise his own head. This was a stroke of divine genius. Again and again the Hound of Heaven sought us out, and again and again we ran away. But who can finally resist the baby who is God?

Friends, many mythologies and philosophies in the ancient world held that time is cyclical; it just goes round and round. Many people today, on the other hand, hold that time is meaningless; it is just one thing after another. The Bible says no to both of those finally despairing understandings of time. As we see in the readings for the fourth Sunday of Advent, time has a trajectory; it moves toward its fulfillment in Christ, who is Emmanuel—“God is with us.”

Friends, today we come to the third Sunday of Advent, and the great image from Isaiah is that of the blooming desert. Many of us pass through desert times, dry periods of trial and training. But perhaps the Lord has drawn us into desert to awaken a deeper sense of dependence upon him. We must be patient; and in this season of waiting, we look toward Christmas—the great blooming in the desert.

Friends, on the second Sunday of Advent, the Church invites us to go meet the great Advent figure of John the Baptist. All the details of our Gospel—where the Baptist makes his appearance, why people come to him, his great theme, the images he uses—are important to enter into a spirituality of Advent.

Friends, Happy New Year's Day! We come today to the beginning of a liturgical year—the first Sunday of Advent. There is a sort of a permanent Advent quality, a vigil quality, to the Christian life. We are waiting, watching; we want something we don't fully have. And as we prepare for the coming of the Lord, our Adventchallenge is this: What is our “highest mountain”? Where do we offer worship? If it is not the mountain of the Lord—if we have fallen into a spiritual sleep—now is the time to wake up and stay awake, to get our lives in order, to stop making excuses.

Friends, we come to the great feast of Christ the King, which is always the last Sunday of the liturgical year. Think of the king coming at the end of a long procession into his palace; this is Christ the King at the end of the great procession of the liturgical year. What I want to do is look at three dimensions of Christ’s kingship, one from each of the three readings today: our unity in Christ, Christ the warrior, and the weapons by which Christ wins the battle with the powers of darkness: his nonviolence and forgiving love.

Friends, as we come toward the end of the liturgical year, we begin to look at the apocalyptic writings in the Bible. What’s indeed revealed is the end of the world in one sense—not so much the end of space-time, but the breaking down of all the frames of reference that we use to understand our lives. Because of the Resurrection of Jesus from the dead, something new had happened. Our Gospel for today, taken from the section of Luke called “the little apocalypse,” shows the shaking of three worlds: the world of religion, the world of politics, and the world of nature.

Friends, our first reading and our Gospel for this weekend have a special resonance for our time because they both speak clearly about life after death. Our dominant secularist or materialist ideology says that matter in motion is all there is; the world came into being, and eventually it will pass out of being. On the other hand, an awful lot of Christians hold to something more Platonic than biblical, thinking of the afterlife as the soul escaping from the body to a purely spiritual place called heaven. But the biblical hope is for the resurrection of the body.

Friends, our first reading from the book of Wisdom makes an extraordinarily important observation that’s of both theological and philosophical significance—namely, that the very fact that something exists means that it has been loved into being. In light of that, we can read our famous Gospel about Zacchaeus as a story of the infinite love and mercy of God pouring into someone’s life—and the conversion that follows.