# A Tiny Whispering Voice Bishop Barron Sermon

An episode of [Daily Sermons With Bishop Robert Barron](https://invisiblenetwork.ai/podcast/6783446284), 20 Sep 2026, 14 min.

Audio: https://dts.podtrac.com/redirect.mp3/api.spreaker.com/download/episode/75098727/a_tiny_whispering_voice_bishop_barron_s_sunday_sermon.mp3



## Transcript

[0:00] Speaker 1: Peace be with you. Friends, for this 19th Sunday of
[0:02] Speaker 1: Ordinary Time, I want to do a little apologetics with you.
[0:05] Speaker 1: I promise, though, I will get to the readings. But,
[0:09] Speaker 1: you know, I do a lot of work online with
[0:11] Speaker 1: people who are often skeptical of religion, and you hear
[0:13] Speaker 1: their questions. When I'm coming up against someone, let's say,
[0:16] Speaker 1: from the left wing, who's, you know, just dismissive of religion,
[0:18] Speaker 1: they say, oh, you know, tired superstition, and it's irrational, etc., etc.
[0:24] Speaker 1: I usually ask a couple of questions. First one is, well,
[0:27] Speaker 1: do you believe in science? And without exception, they say, well, yeah,
[0:32] Speaker 1: of course, follow the science. And look, I'm against superstition.
[0:36] Speaker 1: I like modern science. I say, okay, good. I like science, too.
[0:40] Speaker 1: I say, you know, the condition for the possibility of
[0:44] Speaker 1: any science is the keen sense that the world in
[0:49] Speaker 1: every nook and cranny is intelligible. It can be understood.
[0:54] Speaker 1: It has something like a rational pattern to it. Otherwise,
[0:59] Speaker 1: science wouldn't get off the ground. If things were just
[1:01] Speaker 1: utter chaos, there was no intelligibility, I couldn't launch a science.
[1:06] Speaker 1: I can launch biology, psychology, physiology, because there's logos in
[1:13] Speaker 1: all three, right? I'm looking for the logos in bios.
[1:17] Speaker 1: What's the logos in life? Psychology, I'm looking for the
[1:20] Speaker 1: logos in the psuche. What's the intelligibility of the mind, right?
[1:25] Speaker 1: Or like astronomy. Well, it's not logos, but it's nomos,
[1:28] Speaker 1: which means law. I'm looking for the law of the stars.
[1:33] Speaker 1: All of science, I remind them, depends upon the mystical
[1:38] Speaker 1: intuition that reality is marked by intelligibility. I think I've
[1:43] Speaker 1: told you before about the great physicist Eugene Wigner, who
[1:46] Speaker 1: writes this article in 1960 called The Unreasonable Effectiveness of
[1:51] Speaker 1: Mathematics in the Physical Sciences— What struck Wigner, who was
[1:55] Speaker 1: a secular Jew, by the way, not a religious man,
[1:58] Speaker 1: what struck him was how weird that we need the
[2:01] Speaker 1: most abstract, complex mathematics to describe the qualities of physical reality.
[2:07] Speaker 1: Why should that be true, that there's such a rich
[2:11] Speaker 1: intelligibility patterning within physical things? How about Einstein, my favorite
[2:17] Speaker 1: quote of his? The most incomprehensible thing about the universe
[2:23] Speaker 1: is is that it's comprehensible. Let that sink in. I
[2:26] Speaker 1: often say to these critics of religion, the weirdest thing,
[2:30] Speaker 1: the hardest thing to understand about the world is that
[2:34] Speaker 1: it's understandable. So here's my question to my liberal critics
[2:39] Speaker 1: of religion. How do you explain that? Why is that true?
[2:45] Speaker 1: Where does this universal intelligibility, describable with the most complex mathematics,
[2:53] Speaker 1: come from? You know the answer I get typically? I
[2:55] Speaker 1: don't know. It's just that's the way it is. Hmm.
[2:59] Speaker 1: Good answer? I don't know. Any other read of life
[3:02] Speaker 1: where you're thinking an answer like that's a good answer. Hey,
[3:04] Speaker 1: why is that the case? Well, I don't know. That's
[3:06] Speaker 1: just the way it is. It's dumbly there. I got
[3:10] Speaker 1: a better answer. Why is the world marked by mathematically
[3:16] Speaker 1: precise and complex intelligibility? Because it was made by a mathematician.
[3:24] Speaker 1: in the beginning was the Word, and the Word was
[3:26] Speaker 1: with God, and the Word was God, and all things
[3:28] Speaker 1: that came to be came to be through that Word.
[3:31] Speaker 1: I don't know about you, Mr. Rationality, I'll often say,
[3:37] Speaker 1: but that strikes me as a much more rational answer
[3:40] Speaker 1: to the question of universal intelligibility. Okay, then I say,
[3:44] Speaker 1: while you're thinking about that, let me ask you a
[3:45] Speaker 1: follow-up question. How is it that we are capable of
[3:52] Speaker 1: of understanding the intelligibility of the world. You say, well, no,
[3:56] Speaker 1: it's from your mind or it's from your brain. Okay,
[4:00] Speaker 1: but you're a complete materialist, right? You don't think there's
[4:04] Speaker 1: any purpose or direction of the universe. It's under no
[4:07] Speaker 1: intelligent direction. Things just happen by dumb chance, by the
[4:13] Speaker 1: accidents of evolution, and that's how the brain was produced,
[4:17] Speaker 1: according to you.
[4:18] Speaker 2: Yeah.
[4:19] Speaker 1: Well, here I echo— the great John Lennox, the Oxford
[4:23] Speaker 1: mathematician who was an apologist, too. He said, well, why
[4:26] Speaker 1: in the world would you trust it? This brain is
[4:31] Speaker 1: just thrown together by haphazard chance and evolutionary accidents. Why
[4:36] Speaker 1: would you trust it? If your computer was thrown together
[4:41] Speaker 1: by haphazard accident, would you trust its calculations? See, the
[4:46] Speaker 1: intelligibility of the world is met by an even more puzzling,
[4:51] Speaker 1: if you want, capacity to understand the world. The rational
[4:56] Speaker 1: mind meets intelligible reality. We call that philosophy or, indeed, science.
[5:04] Speaker 1: How do you explain that? I don't know. Dumb chance.
[5:09] Speaker 1: Just the way it goes.
[5:10] Speaker 3: Come on.
[5:11] Speaker 1: It's a stupid answer. I say to them. You call
[5:15] Speaker 1: me irrational? I'm the avatar of superstition? That's a pretty
[5:18] Speaker 1: stupid answer, I think. Much better answer. Both world and
[5:24] Speaker 1: mind come ultimately from a great creative and personal mind
[5:30] Speaker 1: whom we call God. Okay, that was the first set
[5:34] Speaker 1: of questions I asked my skeptical interlocutors. Here's a second one.
[5:40] Speaker 1: People that say, religion's crazy, there's no God, it's just
[5:42] Speaker 1: a lot of old superstition. I'll say, do you think
[5:46] Speaker 1: slavery is wrong? And they say, yeah, of course I do. Well,
[5:53] Speaker 1: what if I just said, no, it's just the consensus
[5:56] Speaker 1: of the culture. You know, most people agree to it,
[5:58] Speaker 1: so we say, okay, slavery is wrong. But, you know, heck,
[6:01] Speaker 1: 200 years ago in our country, the consensus was that
[6:04] Speaker 1: slavery was okay. There were opponents of it, sure. But
[6:08] Speaker 1: I'd say the general consensus 200 years ago was that
[6:11] Speaker 1: slavery was okay. go way back to someone like Aristotle,
[6:15] Speaker 1: a brilliant philosopher. He thought slavery was natural, that some
[6:18] Speaker 1: people were suited for slavery. So what if I said, hey,
[6:22] Speaker 1: you know, someday the consensus might change again, and we'd
[6:25] Speaker 1: say slavery is okay.
[6:27] Speaker 2: No, no, no.
[6:28] Speaker 1: My interlocutor always says, no, no, no, no, no. Slavery
[6:31] Speaker 1: is just wrong. Yeah, I agree with you. It is.
[6:35] Speaker 1: It's just, it's not a matter of just consensus. It's
[6:37] Speaker 1: really wrong. Then I say, how about racism? Is racism wrong? Well, yeah,
[6:44] Speaker 1: of course it is. I mean, that's like just a
[6:46] Speaker 1: basic moral principle of anyone on the left wing today. Racism,
[6:50] Speaker 1: of course, it's wrong. And I say, yeah, I agree
[6:53] Speaker 1: with you. It's wrong. But I said, you know, look,
[6:56] Speaker 1: even 150 years ago, a lot of people in our
[6:59] Speaker 1: country would have said, no, there's a difference between the
[7:01] Speaker 1: races and some are higher than others or superior and
[7:05] Speaker 1: inferior races. And so, you know, treating people accordingly and
[7:09] Speaker 1: segregating them and organizing society according to hierarchies of race
[7:13] Speaker 1: is okay. Very bright people and good people said that
[7:18] Speaker 1: 150 years ago. Yeah, yeah, but they were wrong. Yeah, yeah,
[7:22] Speaker 1: I agree with you. I agree they were wrong. But heck,
[7:25] Speaker 1: what if in 150 years from now, things shift around
[7:28] Speaker 1: and there's a different consensus and people say, I think
[7:32] Speaker 1: slavery is okay.
[7:33] Speaker 2: No, no, no, no.
[7:34] Speaker 1: My interlocutor always says, no, no, no. Slavery is just— racism
[7:37] Speaker 1: is just wrong. Okay, in other words, I say, you
[7:43] Speaker 1: believe in objective moral value. You think there are some
[7:48] Speaker 1: things that are objectively right or wrong. Where does that
[7:56] Speaker 1: come from? Where do these values come from that are
[8:00] Speaker 1: not a matter of just vote or consensus or the
[8:03] Speaker 1: opinion of the crowd, that are in themselves good and evil?
[8:07] Speaker 1: Where does that come from? I don't know, just the
[8:11] Speaker 1: way it is.
[8:13] Speaker 3: Really?
[8:13] Speaker 1: That's your answer? While you're thinking about that, I'll say,
[8:18] Speaker 1: let me ask you another one. How do we come
[8:21] Speaker 1: to recognize these moral values and disvalues? How do we
[8:26] Speaker 1: come to say, yeah, that's right, or, you know, that's wrong?
[8:33] Speaker 1: Where's that come from? Oh, I don't know, just some
[8:37] Speaker 1: kind of instinct that we have. Let me go back
[8:41] Speaker 1: now to the Scripture. I think a great breakthrough in
[8:46] Speaker 1: Western consciousness is reflected in this reading from the first
[8:50] Speaker 1: book of Kings. Remember the famous story of Elijah? He's
[8:53] Speaker 1: on the run, and he comes to horror of the
[8:55] Speaker 1: mountain of God, and he's in great distress. And the
[8:57] Speaker 1: Lord says, I'm going to be passing by. Strong and heavy.
[9:03] Speaker 3: Wind was rending the mountains, crushing the rocks, but the
[9:07] Speaker 3: Lord was not in the wind. After the wind and earthquake,
[9:11] Speaker 3: The Lord was not in the earthquake. After the earthquake
[9:14] Speaker 3: was a fire, but the Lord was not in the fire.
[9:16] Speaker 1: Now, those are all classic kind of signs of rather
[9:19] Speaker 1: bombastic signs of God's presence, right? But then listen. After
[9:24] Speaker 1: the fire, there was a tiny whispering sound. When he
[9:30] Speaker 1: heard this, Elijah hid his face in the cloak and
[9:34] Speaker 1: went and stood at the entrance of the cave. Where
[9:38] Speaker 1: did he sense the presence of God? in this tiny
[9:42] Speaker 1: whispering voice. What is that? How do we recognize objective
[9:52] Speaker 1: moral value? Just as our rational mind recognizes objective intelligibility,
[9:58] Speaker 1: how do we recognize objective moral values? What John Henry
[10:06] Speaker 1: Newman called the aboriginal vicar of Christ in the soul,
[10:11] Speaker 1: the conscience, that we rightly call, mind you, the voice
[10:18] Speaker 1: of our conscience. a voice that tells us, yes, that
[10:27] Speaker 1: is right, that's a value, or that's wrong, that's a disvalue.
[10:34] Speaker 1: Seek and do this. Avoid that. What is this voice?
[10:44] Speaker 1: But the presence of God within us, our capacity to
[10:48] Speaker 1: discern moral value and disvalue, You know, there's a kind
[10:53] Speaker 1: of Freudian reading of conscience. Is there something like this? No, no, no.
[10:57] Speaker 1: Conscience is just the internalized voice of your father. You know,
[11:01] Speaker 1: your father, when your kid told you, do this and
[11:03] Speaker 1: don't do that, and you internalize that, and then you
[11:06] Speaker 1: kind of extrapolate from that as you grow up, it
[11:08] Speaker 1: becomes a sort of unconscious memory of what your father
[11:11] Speaker 1: told you to do and not to do.
[11:13] Speaker 2: Come on.
[11:15] Speaker 1: Let me tell you my argument against that. And I'm
[11:17] Speaker 1: reluctant because my father was the best guy ever. I
[11:20] Speaker 1: love my father. He was a great man. But I
[11:22] Speaker 1: remember the moment— I don't know how old I was— but when
[11:25] Speaker 1: I realized, hey, you.
[11:27] Speaker 2: Know, what my father just said there, that wasn't the
[11:31] Speaker 2: nicest thing or, you know, that wasn't the best thing
[11:35] Speaker 2: for him to do. If the conscience is nothing but
[11:38] Speaker 2: the internalized voice of my father, I'd never be able
[11:40] Speaker 2: to judge father or president or mother or elder.
[11:45] Speaker 1: See what I'm saying? Yes, that plays a role in
[11:48] Speaker 1: the formation of conscience. Yes, indeed, the rules given by
[11:51] Speaker 1: your parents. No, no, but conscience is much more mysterious.
[11:58] Speaker 1: It's rather the presence in you, listen now, of an
[12:02] Speaker 1: intelligent person who knows you intimately and rewards you for
[12:10] Speaker 1: the good choices you make and punishes you for the
[12:13] Speaker 1: bad choices you make. Isn't it interesting, everybody, that when
[12:16] Speaker 1: we do something morally wrong, we feel that we've offended someone,
[12:24] Speaker 1: and we feel accordingly ashamed? Let's say, you know, I'm
[12:29] Speaker 1: a builder, and I did something wrong. You know, it
[12:33] Speaker 1: was bad architecture or bad masonry or whatever, and it
[12:36] Speaker 1: didn't work out well. Well, I might feel like, oh, God,
[12:38] Speaker 1: that was stupid, and that was a mistake. But I
[12:40] Speaker 1: don't feel like I'm ashamed anymore. in the presence of someone.
[12:45] Speaker 1: I might feel stupid. But when you do something morally wrong,
[12:52] Speaker 1: what do you feel? As if you've hurt someone. When
[12:59] Speaker 1: you do something morally right, you feel that you've pleased someone.
[13:07] Speaker 1: There's a tiny whispering voice. that enables us to know
[13:13] Speaker 1: objective moral right and moral wrong. Just as God placed
[13:21] Speaker 1: these values in the world, so it's God who enables
[13:25] Speaker 1: us to intuit them and understand them. So next time
[13:30] Speaker 1: you're up against someone who's just completely dismissive of religion,
[13:35] Speaker 1: ask those two questions. How stand you with science? How
[13:39] Speaker 1: stand you with objective morality? I think you follow both
[13:44] Speaker 1: of those convictions all the way. You come to God.
[13:49] Speaker 1: You come to the author of intelligibility, the author of
[13:53] Speaker 1: moral value, and the one that enables us to understand
[13:57] Speaker 1: intelligibility and discern moral value. And God bless you.

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