# The Goodnessand Dangersof the Law - Bishop Barron's Daily Sermon

An episode of [Daily Sermons With Bishop Robert Barron](https://invisiblenetwork.ai/podcast/6783446284), 23 Jul 2026, 14 min.

Audio: https://dts.podtrac.com/redirect.mp3/api.spreaker.com/download/episode/73038764/the_goodnessand_dangersof_the_law_bishop_barron_s_sunday_sermon.mp3



## Transcript

[0:00] Speaker 1: Peace be with you friends. We turn now from our
[0:02] Speaker 1: johannin Hiatus, so we were looking at chapter six of
[0:06] Speaker 1: John's Gospel for the past several weeks. We return now
[0:09] Speaker 1: to our reading of the Gospel of Mark, which we're
[0:12] Speaker 1: doing during this liturgical cycle, and the readings today, all
[0:17] Speaker 1: three of them are about the law. And the law
[0:20] Speaker 1: is a very interesting theme now in the Bible, and
[0:23] Speaker 1: I think of from an American standpoint, we have this
[0:25] Speaker 1: very ambiguous relationship to law. On the one hand, you know,
[0:29] Speaker 1: we're a nation of independently minded people. Don't tread on me,
[0:33] Speaker 1: don't tell me what to do. There's kind of a
[0:35] Speaker 1: libertarian streak within Americans. We don't like the law imposing
[0:40] Speaker 1: itself on us. At the same time, let's face it,
[0:43] Speaker 1: we are a hyper litigious society. Lawyers and laws are
[0:48] Speaker 1: very thick on the ground in our society. You know,
[0:50] Speaker 1: people will make fun sometimes of the ancient Jewish law,
[0:53] Speaker 1: you know, with a six hundred and some precepts, that's
[0:57] Speaker 1: nothing compared to the American Book of Legal Statutes?
[1:00] Speaker 2: Are you kidding?
[1:01] Speaker 1: It would dwarf anything in the Bible. So we kind
[1:04] Speaker 1: of balk at the law. At the same time, we
[1:07] Speaker 1: have this great reverence for law. I remember Cardinal George
[1:10] Speaker 1: my Mentor used to point out that America is very
[1:12] Speaker 1: much shaped by a Protestant culture. And the two great
[1:16] Speaker 1: Protestant reformers, Martin Luther and John Calvin, were both lawyers.
[1:20] Speaker 1: They were law students early in their life, and so
[1:22] Speaker 1: this kind of legal preoccupation marks our society. Well, I
[1:27] Speaker 1: think the same kind of ambiguity about law you can
[1:30] Speaker 1: see reflected in these readings, that there's something beautiful and
[1:34] Speaker 1: necessary about law, and there's something a little dangerous about law.
[1:39] Speaker 1: And I'll just say something simple now about each one
[1:41] Speaker 1: of those. Listen first, now, our first reading is from
[1:45] Speaker 1: the Book of Deuteronomy, this marvelous final book of the Torah,
[1:50] Speaker 1: Moses lays out the benefits of God's law. Listen, now, Israel,
[1:54] Speaker 1: here the statutes and decrees which I am teaching you
[1:57] Speaker 1: to observe. Observe them carefully, for thus you will give
[2:01] Speaker 1: evidence of your wisdom and intelligence to the nations.
[2:04] Speaker 2: The law. That's what Torah means, right. The law was
[2:08] Speaker 2: the pride and joy of Israel.
[2:10] Speaker 1: It's what made Israel the chosen people, the great people
[2:13] Speaker 1: they were. They couldn't claim political power. They couldn't claim
[2:17] Speaker 1: great artistic accomplishment. They weren't an economic power, but they
[2:22] Speaker 1: had the law from the Lord. It made them distinctive,
[2:25] Speaker 1: It gave them their power. And think of it this way.
[2:30] Speaker 1: Whatever we take seriously, whatever we think is beautiful, we
[2:34] Speaker 1: tend to surround with laws. Why well, to protect the
[2:39] Speaker 1: integrity of that which we find good and beautiful. So
[2:43] Speaker 1: there's a lousey like vacant lots somewhere. There's not gonna
[2:47] Speaker 1: be a lot of laws about it because we don't
[2:49] Speaker 1: have reverence for it. But take something like the game
[2:53] Speaker 1: of baseball. People that love baseball, they reverenced it because
[2:56] Speaker 1: of its beauty and its integrity.
[2:58] Speaker 2: Well, baseball, are you kidding?
[3:00] Speaker 1: It's marked by all kinds of laws that define how
[3:04] Speaker 1: it should be played. There are all kinds of limitations
[3:07] Speaker 1: that ham in the game so as to protect its integrity.
[3:11] Speaker 1: I've used, probably tiresomely for some of you the example
[3:14] Speaker 1: of golf a lot. But not only is the rule
[3:17] Speaker 1: book of golf pretty thick. I mean all the rules
[3:20] Speaker 1: that govern the actual playing of golf.
[3:23] Speaker 2: But think of.
[3:23] Speaker 1: Those rules that govern the golf swing itself. Golfers love
[3:30] Speaker 1: those laws because we reverence the golf swing.
[3:33] Speaker 2: We want it to become better.
[3:35] Speaker 1: It gives us great joy if we do it properly,
[3:38] Speaker 1: and so we want laws to surround it. We like
[3:44] Speaker 1: the laws. We don't think they're an imposition. We think
[3:46] Speaker 1: they actually liberate us. And now, with that golf example
[3:51] Speaker 1: in mind, listen to this line from the second reading
[3:54] Speaker 1: from the letter of James. Humbly, welcome the world word
[4:01] Speaker 1: that has been planted in you and is able to
[4:04] Speaker 1: save your souls. There's a whole world in that line.
[4:09] Speaker 1: Let me say it again, humbly welcome the word that's
[4:13] Speaker 1: been planted in you and is able to save your souls.
[4:17] Speaker 1: What's the word here but the word of God, the Torah.
[4:20] Speaker 1: If you want the law of the Lord that has
[4:24] Speaker 1: come to us through hearing, as Saint Paul says, and
[4:27] Speaker 1: in Saint James.
[4:28] Speaker 2: Language, it has been planted in us.
[4:32] Speaker 1: Now, I stay with the golf thing, because you can
[4:36] Speaker 1: read a book about the golf swing.
[4:39] Speaker 2: I do that.
[4:40] Speaker 1: All golfers, good and bad do that, and we study
[4:44] Speaker 1: here's how you swing the club properly. But the whole
[4:47] Speaker 1: point is not to keep those laws out there on
[4:49] Speaker 1: the pages of a book. It's to bring them into you,
[4:55] Speaker 1: so they get into your muscle memory, they get into
[4:58] Speaker 1: your instincts. They become part of you. So when you
[5:02] Speaker 1: pick up the golf club, you're not tempted to swing
[5:04] Speaker 1: it poorly because the law of golf has been so
[5:08] Speaker 1: internalized it's able to give you a good swing.
[5:13] Speaker 2: Right now.
[5:13] Speaker 1: Put in the spiritual context, the law of the Lord.
[5:17] Speaker 1: The Lord always imposing his laws on me and always
[5:20] Speaker 1: tell me what to do.
[5:21] Speaker 2: Well, the stupid attitude, that's a bad attitude.
[5:25] Speaker 1: That's like a golfer saying, don't hey, Ben Hogan and
[5:28] Speaker 1: Arno Palmer and Jet Nicholas and Tiger Woods, don't don't
[5:30] Speaker 1: give me your laws. Don't lay your hang ups on me. No,
[5:35] Speaker 1: the golfer wants those laws. What I wouldn't give to
[5:38] Speaker 1: have in me? What's in Tiger Woods or what's in
[5:41] Speaker 1: Jack Nicholas. Well, the same thing here is the law
[5:45] Speaker 1: of the Lord. The word of the Lord seeps into
[5:50] Speaker 1: our hearts, into our minds, into our instincts, into our bodies.
[5:57] Speaker 1: Who are saints. But those who have so internalized the
[6:01] Speaker 1: law that they effortlessly move according to its dictates. Mind
[6:07] Speaker 1: you that that's not slavery. It's the opposite.
[6:12] Speaker 2: That's finding freedom.
[6:14] Speaker 1: I'm free to swing that darn golf club properly because
[6:18] Speaker 1: I've internalized the rules of golf, the laws of the swing.
[6:22] Speaker 1: So the saint is able to move with great freedom
[6:27] Speaker 1: through the world because she has welcomed the word and
[6:31] Speaker 1: understands how that word is able to save her soul.
[6:37] Speaker 1: So all of that is meant to emphasize the goodness
[6:42] Speaker 1: of the law, the importance of it. We should overcome
[6:46] Speaker 1: this sort of immature preoccupation with you know, hey, walk
[6:50] Speaker 1: in my own way and don't lay your hang ups
[6:53] Speaker 1: on me. That's silly adolescent talk. No, the more spiritually
[6:57] Speaker 1: mature you are, the more you want you want the
[7:01] Speaker 1: loss of the Lord inside of you. Okay, so so far,
[7:05] Speaker 1: so good. But when we turn to the Gospel, and
[7:08] Speaker 1: this is a very helpful balance. In the Gospel, we
[7:13] Speaker 1: see if you want the shadow side of law, what
[7:17] Speaker 1: can happen to law when it's kind of misappropriated or
[7:20] Speaker 1: when it's misconstrued.
[7:22] Speaker 2: Let me just read you a little bit.
[7:23] Speaker 1: It's from the Gospel of Mark, and he's talking about
[7:27] Speaker 1: the Pharisees and the scribes who have gathered around Jesus,
[7:31] Speaker 1: and he's trying to explain to us what these people
[7:34] Speaker 1: are about. He says, the Pharisees do not eat without
[7:38] Speaker 1: carefully washing their hands, keeping the tradition of the elders
[7:42] Speaker 1: on coming to the marketplace. They do not eat without
[7:44] Speaker 1: purifying themselves. There are many other things that they've traditionally observed,
[7:48] Speaker 1: the purification of cups and drugs, and kettles and beds.
[7:52] Speaker 1: So he's laying out this sort of preoccupation with the
[7:57] Speaker 1: minutia of the Jewish law. And so these men who
[8:01] Speaker 1: are kind of obsessed with this minutia are coming to
[8:05] Speaker 1: Jesus and his disciples and complaining that they don't follow
[8:09] Speaker 1: all of these prescripts. So what does the Lord saying, Ah,
[8:14] Speaker 1: how well did Isaiah prophesy about you hypocrites? This people
[8:18] Speaker 1: honors me with their lips, but their hearts are far
[8:20] Speaker 1: from me. Listen, now you disregard God's commandment but cling
[8:26] Speaker 1: to mere human tradition. So now we're looking, as I say,
[8:32] Speaker 1: at the shadow side of law. I'm not going to
[8:34] Speaker 1: take back one little thing I said about the law
[8:36] Speaker 1: and the beauty and importance of it. Jesus is the
[8:39] Speaker 1: Torah made flesh. That's the way to understand the word
[8:43] Speaker 1: becoming flesh. He's the law of God made flesh.
[8:46] Speaker 2: So I'm not saying one little thing bad about that.
[8:50] Speaker 1: But I'll say just a few things now about the
[8:53] Speaker 1: shadow site. The first is what Jesus points out here,
[8:57] Speaker 1: a tendency to mistake the essential for the non essential,
[9:03] Speaker 1: or the non essential for the essential.
[9:06] Speaker 2: Are there certain.
[9:07] Speaker 1: Laws that are really fundamental, that are so basic, yeah,
[9:12] Speaker 1: that govern the moral life and govern the spiritual life.
[9:14] Speaker 1: Think of the Ten Commandments, for example, things that are
[9:17] Speaker 1: so central to being spiritually morally healthy that they can't
[9:22] Speaker 1: be disobeyed. But along with those, are there traditions that
[9:27] Speaker 1: have come into the law that probably originally had a
[9:30] Speaker 1: very good purpose, So like, for example, the cleansing of
[9:33] Speaker 1: the jugs and the kettles and the plates and all that.
[9:36] Speaker 2: Sure, it's a.
[9:36] Speaker 1: Gesture toward ritual purity. It's a way of signaling, you know,
[9:42] Speaker 1: your reverence for the Lord and all that. But is
[9:45] Speaker 1: there a tendency and it's just built in, I think,
[9:47] Speaker 1: to any religious structure to mistake the non essential for
[9:52] Speaker 1: the essential and to become preoccupied with the sort of
[9:56] Speaker 1: trivial minutia of the law. Can I give you an
[10:01] Speaker 1: example here, not that long ago I was I was
[10:04] Speaker 1: on YouTube and I saw this old video of Polpius
[10:08] Speaker 1: the twelfth sometime in the nineteen fifties, probably being carried
[10:12] Speaker 1: into Saint Peter's on the Sadia Gestatoria. Remember that was
[10:15] Speaker 1: the seat that the people would hold up, and he
[10:19] Speaker 1: was surrounded by courtiers with Ostrich's plumes and they were
[10:22] Speaker 1: kind of fanning him as he went by. Well, you know,
[10:25] Speaker 1: from an historical standpoint and as a Catholic student of Catholicism,
[10:30] Speaker 1: I find that sort of fascinating. But you know, those
[10:34] Speaker 1: moves fell away after Vatican to Paul the sixth got
[10:38] Speaker 1: rid of most of that. John Paul the second never
[10:40] Speaker 1: revived it. Neither did Benedic the sixteenth nor his Pope Francis.
[10:44] Speaker 1: The point is, those things, which originally borrowed from European
[10:49] Speaker 1: court ceremonial was meant to signal, you know, the reverence
[10:52] Speaker 1: to the pope and all that's great, But I think
[10:55] Speaker 1: more contemporary popes have said, yeah, but they carry such
[10:58] Speaker 1: a negative overtone of kind of trial, full of and
[11:01] Speaker 1: so they were allowed to fall to the side. Are
[11:04] Speaker 1: there some people that mistake those merely human traditions for
[11:09] Speaker 1: what is essential to God's law. That's the first problem.
[11:13] Speaker 1: Here's the second one. Maybe keep the jugs and the
[11:16] Speaker 1: kettles and the plates and all that stuff in mind,
[11:18] Speaker 1: and all the little moves of purification. Can there be
[11:21] Speaker 1: a stifling quality to the law if it's not properly understood.
[11:26] Speaker 2: What I mean is I'm so.
[11:27] Speaker 1: Aware of all of these laws, both central and non essential,
[11:33] Speaker 1: that I become essentially paralyzed by them. I become obsessive
[11:38] Speaker 1: compulsive about them. Think here of go back to golf again.
[11:42] Speaker 1: I'm sorry, but there's a famous poster that shows this
[11:46] Speaker 1: golfer and he's lining up to the ball, and there's
[11:48] Speaker 1: a list of about one hundred recommendations and tips right
[11:53] Speaker 1: that he should have in mind as he's over the ball,
[11:55] Speaker 1: and the last one is relax and swing away.
[11:59] Speaker 2: If you've got.
[12:00] Speaker 1: All of that, both essential and trivial, in your mind,
[12:05] Speaker 1: you're not able to swing. In fact, it's undermining the
[12:08] Speaker 1: golf swing. We call it paralysis by analysis. Well, something
[12:13] Speaker 1: similar can happen in the spiritual order if the law
[12:16] Speaker 1: has become this kind of obsessive preoccupation with detail and minutia.
[12:22] Speaker 1: Here's just a last observation, and boy, read the letters
[12:25] Speaker 1: of Paul if you want to see this.
[12:28] Speaker 2: Can the law in all of its beauty?
[12:30] Speaker 1: I'm not saying one little thing against that, But can
[12:33] Speaker 1: the law at times become a means of aggression? Do
[12:37] Speaker 1: you know what I'm saying is since I know the
[12:39] Speaker 1: law so well, I can point out exactly what.
[12:42] Speaker 2: You're doing wrong.
[12:44] Speaker 1: Can put me one more golf example is if you
[12:47] Speaker 1: want to undermine your golf partner, this is really bad etiquette.
[12:51] Speaker 1: But if you want to undermine your golf partner, just say,
[12:54] Speaker 1: you know, I noticed that when you're coming down your
[12:56] Speaker 1: elbows a little too far from your side and that's
[12:58] Speaker 1: why you're coming across the ball. Now, they say you
[13:00] Speaker 1: should never do that in the golf course, you should
[13:02] Speaker 1: never give people unsolicited advice. But see what you're doing
[13:05] Speaker 1: there is you're taking a law of golf which is legitimate,
[13:09] Speaker 1: and you're kind of planting it aggressively in that guy's mind.
[13:13] Speaker 1: You're using the law to attack him. Now, I know
[13:17] Speaker 1: we all say, piously, oh, I would never do that. No, No,
[13:20] Speaker 1: the law of God is just wonderful. Repaul again, how
[13:24] Speaker 1: the law can become a source of aggression? If it's
[13:27] Speaker 1: used not in a spirit of love. Okay, law, it's great,
[13:33] Speaker 1: it's beautiful. We love it, we reverence it, and law
[13:37] Speaker 1: carries with it a certain shadow side. How wonderful that
[13:42] Speaker 1: the Bible is so frank about the problem, even as
[13:47] Speaker 1: it sings the beauty of law. Thank God, bless you.

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