# Bishop Barron – You Need to Rethink Your Spiritual Life

An episode of [Daily Sermons With Bishop Robert Barron](https://invisiblenetwork.ai/podcast/6783446284), 14 Sep 2026, 16 min.

Audio: https://dts.podtrac.com/redirect.mp3/api.spreaker.com/download/episode/72733602/classic_sunday_sermon_you_must_rethink_your_spiritual_life.mp3



## Transcript

[0:06] Speaker 1: Peace be with you friends. Our first reading for this
[0:08] Speaker 1: weekend is from the marvelous Book of Wisdom, and the
[0:12] Speaker 1: problem is it might easily slip past our minds, but Gosh,
[0:16] Speaker 1: it shouldn't, because it articulates what is arguably the principle
[0:23] Speaker 1: of biblical revelation. What I mean is the primacy of grace.
[0:30] Speaker 1: Let me say that again. The central principle of the
[0:32] Speaker 1: whole Bible is the primacy of grace. As I've said before,
[0:37] Speaker 1: the Bible is not the story of our quest for God.
[0:41] Speaker 1: Go to any bookstore, go on the spirituality shelves. You'll
[0:44] Speaker 1: find a hundred books about the human quest for God.
[0:49] Speaker 1: Bible isn't that story. It's the story of God's quest
[0:53] Speaker 1: for us. It is God who always takes the initiative
[0:59] Speaker 1: in this spiritual order. It's God who sets the tone.
[1:03] Speaker 1: It's God who's always the master of the conversation. You know,
[1:08] Speaker 1: there's a great temptation in all of us sinners to
[1:11] Speaker 1: turn God into a distant spiritual force or principle, and
[1:17] Speaker 1: then we're striving to find our way to that God,
[1:22] Speaker 1: or we turn God into a difficult moral task master.
[1:27] Speaker 1: And only through heroic effort can we sufficiently impress him.
[1:32] Speaker 1: We see the problem with both those approaches is it
[1:34] Speaker 1: puts us and our achievements in the forefront. It's my
[1:40] Speaker 1: heroic climbing of the sacred mountain. It's my heroic exercise
[1:44] Speaker 1: of the moral life. I'm finding God, but on my terms,
[1:50] Speaker 1: not God's. And all of that, everybody is inimical to
[1:55] Speaker 1: the Bible, from Genesis to Revelation. We sense the truth
[2:00] Speaker 1: of this in the very opening verses of the Scripture.
[2:05] Speaker 1: I'm talking about the account of creation. God makes the
[2:11] Speaker 1: whole of finite reality. You know, think this for a second. Often,
[2:15] Speaker 1: even when we're in kind of a spiritual framework, we
[2:18] Speaker 1: think of the world as well. It's just kind of
[2:20] Speaker 1: dumbly there. And then God is some power up there
[2:22] Speaker 1: out there, and now I got to just make my
[2:24] Speaker 1: way and try to find my path to God. No, no, no,
[2:28] Speaker 1: everything around me, whatever exists, is already the gift of God.
[2:36] Speaker 1: That's what creation means. God is the one who brought
[2:39] Speaker 1: the whole affinitude into being. This world is not just
[2:44] Speaker 1: dumbly there, it's there as a result of God's initiative,
[2:46] Speaker 1: of God's grace. More to it, everything in me. So
[2:54] Speaker 1: I'm seeking God with my mind and my will and
[2:56] Speaker 1: my passions and so on. Well, we're in my mind
[2:59] Speaker 1: and will and passion It's come from It's not like
[3:02] Speaker 1: I just happen to have them and now God's out there,
[3:04] Speaker 1: and boy, I'm going to make my way to impress God. No, no,
[3:07] Speaker 1: I'm a contrary. My mind, my will, my energy, my passion,
[3:11] Speaker 1: everything in me is always already the gift of God.
[3:18] Speaker 1: God always comes first. Whatever we do, God has been
[3:24] Speaker 1: there first. And then don't we see this throughout salvation history.
[3:29] Speaker 1: Look in the great Biblical stories, I mean from Abraham
[3:33] Speaker 1: and Moses, Samuel, David. It's always God who does the summoning.
[3:40] Speaker 1: The stress is not on our heroic quest for God.
[3:43] Speaker 1: It's always on God's initiative. It doesn't Jesus himself with
[3:50] Speaker 1: full magisterial authority sum this up.
[3:55] Speaker 2: It is not you who have chosen me. It is
[3:59] Speaker 2: I who have chose you.
[4:01] Speaker 1: Can I suggest everybody, when you let that get into
[4:04] Speaker 1: your heart, I mean all the way down, everything will change.
[4:09] Speaker 1: It's all I'm looking for meaning, I'm searching for God. No, no, no,
[4:12] Speaker 1: that's not the interesting part of the story at all.
[4:15] Speaker 1: It's not you who've chosen me. It is I who
[4:19] Speaker 1: have chosen you the primacy of grace. Okay, now I
[4:24] Speaker 1: bring all this up because of our reading from Wisdom. Marvelous.
[4:29] Speaker 1: Listen out how the Book of Wisdom expresses this. She
[4:34] Speaker 1: referring here to God's wisdom. She is readily perceived by
[4:38] Speaker 1: those who love her and found by those who seek her. Now,
[4:42] Speaker 1: why why she hastens to make herself known in anticipation
[4:50] Speaker 1: of their desire. Whoever watches for her at dawn shall
[4:54] Speaker 1: not be disappointed. Why for she shall find her already
[4:59] Speaker 1: sitting by the gate. And finally she, again God's wisdom,
[5:04] Speaker 1: makes her own rounds, seeking those worthy of her, and
[5:10] Speaker 1: graciously appears to them in the way, and meets them
[5:13] Speaker 1: with all solicitude. To see the point being made, Yes,
[5:19] Speaker 1: there's something to be said for the human quest for wisdom.
[5:21] Speaker 1: Go back to Socrates in Plato if you want. That's
[5:24] Speaker 1: human beings looking for wisdom. But the Bible isn't primarily
[5:28] Speaker 1: interested in that, but rather in God's wisdom that hastens
[5:35] Speaker 1: to make herself known in anticipation of their desire. It's
[5:41] Speaker 1: God who is who is revealing himself to us even
[5:46] Speaker 1: before we begin to seek in fact, our seeking is
[5:49] Speaker 1: predicated upon the fact that we've already been found, If
[5:53] Speaker 1: that makes sense. Herbert McCabe, the great contemporary Dominican theologian,
[6:01] Speaker 1: once said this about prayer. Whatever is valuable in our prayer.
[6:07] Speaker 1: So I'm asking God for something.
[6:11] Speaker 2: If that's a.
[6:12] Speaker 1: Valuable prayer, it's always already God praying in me. Remember
[6:20] Speaker 1: how Saint Paul talks about the spirit with kind of
[6:23] Speaker 1: inexpressible groaning petitions for what we are not able to petition.
[6:30] Speaker 1: It's the Spirit already in us praying. There's the primacy
[6:37] Speaker 1: of grace. So if all this is true, everybody and
[6:43] Speaker 1: I think inescapably it is in the Bible. Most of
[6:46] Speaker 1: us have to rethink our spiritual lives. I think consciously
[6:53] Speaker 1: or unconsciously. We tend to operate out of that false
[6:56] Speaker 1: assumption that I've been outlining, namely that God is pretty
[7:02] Speaker 1: hard to get to. God is just pretty distant, pretty demanding,
[7:10] Speaker 1: certainly not easily impressed. Again, on this reading, it's our
[7:16] Speaker 1: spiritual attainment that kind of comes to the forest. Well, God,
[7:19] Speaker 1: God's really difficult, so I better really get my act together,
[7:23] Speaker 1: I better really get things right to impress him. But
[7:28] Speaker 1: what if all of that is getting the spiritual life
[7:31] Speaker 1: precisely backward.
[7:34] Speaker 2: You know.
[7:34] Speaker 1: Think of the great immature from the Book of Revelation,
[7:38] Speaker 1: Jesus knocking at the door. Well, I mean, we're kind
[7:43] Speaker 1: of very much at home with I guess I better
[7:45] Speaker 1: knock on the door of God. I better seek after Jesus.
[7:50] Speaker 1: What if the primordial truth is that it's Jesus knocking
[7:56] Speaker 1: on my door, That whatever enthusiasm I muster for the
[8:01] Speaker 1: quest for God, there's an infinitely greater enthusiasm on God's
[8:05] Speaker 1: part for me to find me. Maybe the spiritual life
[8:10] Speaker 1: isn't so much climbing up the Holy mountain on my
[8:13] Speaker 1: you know, strength, but rather in opening the door on
[8:21] Speaker 1: which Jesus is consistently knocking.
[8:25] Speaker 2: He wants to find us. He wants to find us,
[8:30] Speaker 2: allow yourself to be found.
[8:34] Speaker 1: Is that the heart of the spiritual life? You know.
[8:38] Speaker 1: One of the maybe the greatest spiritual master in the
[8:42] Speaker 1: Catholic tradition is the sixteenth century Spanish Carmelite Saint John
[8:47] Speaker 1: of the Cross Juan de la Cruz. If you love
[8:50] Speaker 1: the Spanish language, by the way, he's also one of
[8:53] Speaker 1: the very finest poets in Spanish. Read out of the
[8:57] Speaker 1: Cross for his literary style, but him above all for
[9:01] Speaker 1: his spiritual substance. Well, recently I was reading a commentator
[9:05] Speaker 1: on John of Lacrosse and he said this, here's the
[9:08] Speaker 1: way to sum up the teaching of John of the
[9:10] Speaker 1: Cross in contemporary terms. God is like the pilot of
[9:16] Speaker 1: a helicopter that's just endeavoring to land, and he's endeavoring
[9:20] Speaker 1: to land on the ground of our hearts. God wants
[9:25] Speaker 1: to bring the helicopter in what's the spiritual life. The
[9:31] Speaker 1: spiritual life, this commentator said, summing up John of the
[9:34] Speaker 1: Cross is to clear the ground. What's in the way,
[9:40] Speaker 1: what's preventing the helicopter of Christ's grace to land in
[9:45] Speaker 1: our hearts. Well, I spoke last week about all of
[9:49] Speaker 1: these attachments. So if I'm attached to wealth, wealth is
[9:53] Speaker 1: just like is preoccupying me. Think of that as all
[9:56] Speaker 1: kinds of clutter on the ground. So the helicopter that
[10:00] Speaker 1: wants to land, he's not playing hard to get. God
[10:04] Speaker 1: isn't staying at a distance. No, No, he's hovering right
[10:08] Speaker 1: over our hearts shift metaphor knocking at the door. But
[10:12] Speaker 1: he wants to land. What's on the ground is the
[10:15] Speaker 1: clutter of my preoccupation with wealth, maybe my preoccupation with power.
[10:23] Speaker 1: Spent all my time fussing about worldly power. Maybe it's honor.
[10:27] Speaker 1: I'm just so concerned about the people like me. It seven,
[10:30] Speaker 1: all of that is just this junk on the ground.
[10:34] Speaker 1: And so for John of the Cross, much of the
[10:38] Speaker 1: spiritual life, it's not it's not climbing the holy mountain.
[10:43] Speaker 1: It's clearing the holy ground of my own heart so
[10:48] Speaker 1: that the divine presence can land. It's if you want,
[10:54] Speaker 1: I'm shifting metaphors again, move all his clutter away from
[10:57] Speaker 1: the door. There's Jesus knocking at the door. I want
[11:00] Speaker 1: to get in. I want into your heart. But now
[11:03] Speaker 1: think of that. That door is like in a in
[11:05] Speaker 1: an attic or a basement. It's got all kinds of
[11:07] Speaker 1: clutter and junk in front of it, so you can't
[11:10] Speaker 1: open it. Move that stuff out of the way. There's
[11:15] Speaker 1: the there's the ascetic life. If you want it's it's
[11:18] Speaker 1: the It's the cleansing of the heart, the clearing of
[11:22] Speaker 1: the obstacle, so that you can simply open the door
[11:26] Speaker 1: and let him in. What if that's the spiritual life? Everybody,
[11:32] Speaker 1: the wisdom of God hastens to make herself known in
[11:39] Speaker 1: anticipation of our desire, marvelous before we even want the
[11:45] Speaker 1: divine wisdom, she wants us more. That's the point. Open
[11:50] Speaker 1: yourself to that truth. Okay, there's the principle. Let me
[11:55] Speaker 1: just bring this to a close by asking what this
[11:59] Speaker 1: might look like concretely. So you say, okay, I get
[12:02] Speaker 1: that principle, but how do I make it real in
[12:05] Speaker 1: my life? Well, let me just say three simple things
[12:07] Speaker 1: as I close. Here's the first suggestion. Every day, take
[12:15] Speaker 1: five minutes. I'm not asking it for a holy hour,
[12:18] Speaker 1: although that would be great if you can do it,
[12:20] Speaker 1: But take five minutes in a focused way to say,
[12:27] Speaker 1: all right, Lord, I believe you are looking for me.
[12:34] Speaker 1: I believe you want a relationship with me, So come
[12:40] Speaker 1: into my heart. Take five minutes. I don't know what's
[12:44] Speaker 1: the best time of day for you. First thing in
[12:45] Speaker 1: the morning, maybe even during a break at work, or
[12:48] Speaker 1: maybe you're in the car stuck in traffic, maybe the
[12:51] Speaker 1: end of the day. Take five minutes every day just
[12:55] Speaker 1: say Lord, I believe you are searching for me. Open
[13:02] Speaker 1: your heart to him. Stop running away from the hound
[13:07] Speaker 1: of heaven. Right that line from that marvelous Francis Thompson poem.
[13:11] Speaker 1: I fled him down the nights and down the days.
[13:14] Speaker 1: I fled him down the years. I fled him down
[13:16] Speaker 1: the labyrinthine ways of my own mind. That the soul
[13:20] Speaker 1: that's running from God. But God isn't just out there
[13:23] Speaker 1: waiting for us. He's the hound of Heaven galloping after us.
[13:26] Speaker 1: All right, stop and let yourself be found. That's the point, okay.
[13:30] Speaker 1: Second suggestion, as I've hinted already, be attentive to the
[13:36] Speaker 1: attachments in your life. Again. By this, I just mean
[13:41] Speaker 1: worldly things that have taken on a disproportionate importance and centrality. Money, success, fame, power, pleasure,
[13:49] Speaker 1: all the usual suspects, all those things making the landing
[13:54] Speaker 1: of the helicopter difficult, all those things blocking the door
[13:57] Speaker 1: that Jesus wants to enter. Attentive to them and do
[14:01] Speaker 1: something about them, clear them away. Third and final suggestion
[14:06] Speaker 1: to instantiate this spirituality, be grateful gratitude for gifts given,
[14:17] Speaker 1: rather than a frenzied quest to be perfect. That's a
[14:21] Speaker 1: saner spiritual attitude. You know what I'm saying is I
[14:24] Speaker 1: am going to be perfect. I'm going to climb the
[14:26] Speaker 1: holy Mountain my efforts God that wants in be grateful.
[14:33] Speaker 1: Be grateful for all He's given, all that's already available
[14:37] Speaker 1: to me, from everything that exists in my own being.
[14:41] Speaker 1: Be grateful. As Saint Paul said, what do you have
[14:47] Speaker 1: that you've not received? Well, the answer is nothing. Everything
[14:52] Speaker 1: I have is something I've received as a gift. Cultivate
[14:56] Speaker 1: gratitude as a basic attitude in life, and you'll pave
[15:01] Speaker 1: the way for the opening of the door to Christ.
[15:05] Speaker 1: So it's not so much we who've chosen him, it's
[15:10] Speaker 1: He who has chosen us. Let that sink in your
[15:16] Speaker 1: whole spiritual life will change

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