# The Fruit of the Spirit - Bishop Barron Sermon

An episode of [Daily Sermons With Bishop Robert Barron](https://invisiblenetwork.ai/podcast/6783446284), 11 Oct 2026, 16 min.

Audio: https://dts.podtrac.com/redirect.mp3/api.spreaker.com/download/episode/75633278/the_fruit_of_the_spirit_bishop_barron_s_sunday_sermon.mp3



## Transcript

[0:00] Speaker 1: Peace be with you. Friends, this great Feast of Pentecost,
[0:02] Speaker 1: the greatest alongside of Christmas and Easter, greatest of the
[0:06] Speaker 1: liturgical year, the Feast of the Holy Spirit. And we
[0:09] Speaker 1: celebrate the first coming of the Spirit upon the apostles,
[0:13] Speaker 1: that marvelous day in Jerusalem when they are filled with
[0:15] Speaker 1: the Holy Spirit, the tongues of fire, they begin to
[0:18] Speaker 1: proclaim now to all the world. It's the birthday of
[0:21] Speaker 1: the church, Pentecost, so much to think about and talk about.
[0:26] Speaker 1: I love the fact that the Holy Spirit manifests himself
[0:29] Speaker 1: As a strong driving wind in the first reading for today. Wind.
[0:35] Speaker 1: You know, you can't really see wind. As the Lord
[0:38] Speaker 1: himself said famously, we don't know where it's coming from,
[0:41] Speaker 1: where it's going, and you can't see it directly. What
[0:43] Speaker 1: do you see, though? The effects of wind. You can
[0:47] Speaker 1: see trees blowing in the wind. You can see things
[0:50] Speaker 1: pushed along the road by the wind. Great hurricane winds
[0:54] Speaker 1: can uproot trees, et cetera. So the power of it
[0:57] Speaker 1: is manifested in the effects that we can see. Well,
[1:01] Speaker 1: that is a good comparison with the Holy Spirit because
[1:04] Speaker 1: Holy Spirit is God. God is invisible. God's a spirit.
[1:07] Speaker 1: We can't see directly. We don't know what his purposes are,
[1:12] Speaker 1: where he's coming from, and what he's about, but but
[1:15] Speaker 1: we can see his effects in the world. That's what
[1:19] Speaker 1: happened that first Pentecost morning, is people speaking in different
[1:23] Speaker 1: languages and with enthusiasm, and they saw the effect the
[1:28] Speaker 1: Spirit had on the first apostles. So what I want
[1:31] Speaker 1: to talk about, though it's not the reading for today,
[1:34] Speaker 1: but it's one of my favorite texts, and it's to
[1:37] Speaker 1: this point. Galatians chapter 5, beginning verse 22, when St.
[1:41] Speaker 1: Paul talks about what he calls the fruit's of the
[1:45] Speaker 1: Holy Spirit. What are the signs that the Holy Spirit
[1:50] Speaker 1: is operative in us? Thomas Aquinas beautifully talks about fruits as,
[1:55] Speaker 1: you know, the result of life. So a living vine
[1:58] Speaker 1: or a plant or a tree gives rise to fruit.
[2:01] Speaker 1: So it comes from a life that's already present. So
[2:05] Speaker 1: the fruits come from the life of the Spirit in us.
[2:09] Speaker 1: But then Thomas adds beautifully, fruit is sweet to the taste.
[2:13] Speaker 1: And so these signs of the Spirit's presence are sweet indeed.
[2:18] Speaker 1: They're marvelous additions to life. So I want to just
[2:21] Speaker 1: do a brief reflection on them. But please get out
[2:24] Speaker 1: your Bibles when you have a chance. Galatians chapter 5,
[2:26] Speaker 1: beginning verse 22. And you'll see a list of these.
[2:31] Speaker 1: Let me just say this right away. Over the years,
[2:35] Speaker 1: people ask me all the time, you know, how do
[2:36] Speaker 1: I know the will of God? How do I know
[2:39] Speaker 1: what God wants me to do? It might be a seminarian.
[2:42] Speaker 1: Do I become a priest or not? Or anyone asking,
[2:44] Speaker 1: what does God want me to do? I very often
[2:47] Speaker 1: point them to this text, Galatians 5.22. And now here
[2:51] Speaker 1: are the fruits of the Holy Spirit. I'll say a
[2:53] Speaker 1: word about each one. Paul says they are love, joy, peace, long-suffering, gentleness, goodness, faith, meekness,
[3:05] Speaker 1: and temperance. When you see those nine things... you got
[3:11] Speaker 1: a good indication that the Holy Spirit is operative, is alive.
[3:16] Speaker 1: And these are the fruits to which Spirit gives rise.
[3:20] Speaker 1: So let me take them just one by one. The
[3:22] Speaker 1: first one, appropriately, is love. Now, why? Because that's who
[3:28] Speaker 1: the Holy Spirit is. One of the Spirit's names is
[3:31] Speaker 1: vinculum amoris, the chain of love, because the Spirit is
[3:34] Speaker 1: the love that connects the Father and the Son. The
[3:37] Speaker 1: Spirit is the love that God is. So the infallible
[3:42] Speaker 1: sign of the Spirit's presence in us is love. Now,
[3:46] Speaker 1: what's love? Well, love is the ordering of the will
[3:49] Speaker 1: toward the good. Thomas Aquinas says that. So the will
[3:53] Speaker 1: that's ordered toward the supreme good of God is in
[3:56] Speaker 1: love with God. In love with God, that will loves
[4:00] Speaker 1: everything and everybody that God loves. And therefore, we say famously,
[4:04] Speaker 1: love is willing the good of the other. It wills
[4:08] Speaker 1: the good of God, it rests in it, and then
[4:10] Speaker 1: it wills good for all the things and people that
[4:12] Speaker 1: God loves. That's the great sign of the Holy Spirit.
[4:18] Speaker 1: Do you will the good of God, and then do
[4:21] Speaker 1: you will the good to all those things and people
[4:23] Speaker 1: that God loves? You know, Jesus said, this is how
[4:27] Speaker 1: they will know that you are my disciples, that you
[4:29] Speaker 1: love one another. He didn't say they'll know it because, boy,
[4:33] Speaker 1: you have a command of the catechism. Boy, oh boy,
[4:35] Speaker 1: do you know theology, or man, you make it to
[4:38] Speaker 1: every ecclesiastical event. I'm not bad-mouthing any of those things.
[4:41] Speaker 1: I've given my life to many of them. But they're
[4:45] Speaker 1: not the primary sign. Those things are all designed to
[4:50] Speaker 1: give rise to the primary thing, which is love. If
[4:54] Speaker 1: there's someone who's, you know, they're the most religious person
[4:58] Speaker 1: I know, but they're not loving, then religion ain't working
[5:02] Speaker 1: in their case. The Holy Spirit is not alive. That's
[5:06] Speaker 1: the infallible sign. Now, from this love follows the second
[5:11] Speaker 1: fruit of the Holy Spirit, namely joy. Again, Thomas Aquinas says,
[5:17] Speaker 1: joy comes from possessing the good that you seek. Makes sense, right?
[5:22] Speaker 1: Your will wants a good, and when it has it,
[5:25] Speaker 1: it rejoices in it. The will can seek the absent good,
[5:29] Speaker 1: but then it can rejoice in the good possessed. So
[5:34] Speaker 1: somebody who's in love with God, they rejoice. They're in
[5:39] Speaker 1: the presence of the summum bonum, the highest good. And
[5:44] Speaker 1: that love, that joy just tend to bubble over. It overflows.
[5:48] Speaker 1: It overflows. it's been said you know by the spiritual
[5:52] Speaker 1: masters that the flag of the holy spirit is joy
[5:56] Speaker 1: i've always liked that you know you see somebody and
[5:59] Speaker 1: they have all kinds of qualities but they're just they're
[6:01] Speaker 1: not joyful that's a pretty good sign the holy spirit's
[6:04] Speaker 1: not living in them or someone could be in the
[6:07] Speaker 1: worst circumstances you think how could that person be even
[6:11] Speaker 1: barely psychologically adjusted and yet they're bubbling over with joy
[6:16] Speaker 1: because they're in the presence of the good that they
[6:18] Speaker 1: seek that's the sign of the holy spirit It doesn't
[6:22] Speaker 1: mean that you've got to be emotionally giddy every moment
[6:25] Speaker 1: of your life, but it's that deep sense of abiding
[6:29] Speaker 1: joy in the Lord. Now, love, then joy, and from
[6:34] Speaker 1: that follows the next one, which is peace. It's a
[6:38] Speaker 1: great word. Paul would have, in his Hebrew mind, would
[6:41] Speaker 1: have been thinking shalom. Irenae is the word he uses
[6:44] Speaker 1: in Greek. It's what Jesus says to his disciples after
[6:48] Speaker 1: the resurrection. Peace be with you. What's peace? Well, Aquinas
[6:53] Speaker 1: says it's that equanimity that comes from being serenely in
[6:58] Speaker 1: the presence of God. See what he means? If you
[7:02] Speaker 1: love God and you're in possession of God and you
[7:04] Speaker 1: have the joy that comes from that, well, whether things
[7:07] Speaker 1: are going well or poorly, it's all right. You're at peace.
[7:11] Speaker 1: Whether you're rich or poor, whether you're healthy or sick,
[7:15] Speaker 1: it doesn't really matter because you're in the presence of
[7:18] Speaker 1: the supreme good. That's why the masters talk about indifference
[7:22] Speaker 1: and apathy. Indifference in the spiritual life means, again, whether
[7:25] Speaker 1: it's good or bad outside me, whether it's I'm rich
[7:28] Speaker 1: or poor, it doesn't matter because I found this equanimity
[7:33] Speaker 1: of spirit, this serenity of soul. Here's something, everybody, I've
[7:38] Speaker 1: noticed in certain people in my life. I had a
[7:41] Speaker 1: great friend, Monsignor Bill Quinn, of happy memory. Bill was
[7:45] Speaker 1: a newly retired 70-year-old priest when I was a newly
[7:48] Speaker 1: ordained 26-year-old priest at St. Paul the Cross Parish outside Chicago.
[7:53] Speaker 1: And Bill and I, despite the age difference and all that,
[7:55] Speaker 1: became great friends. And he's a very wise man. And
[7:58] Speaker 1: I would often go to his room and talk to
[8:00] Speaker 1: him about the struggles I was having or pastoral difficulties.
[8:03] Speaker 1: I was just a beginner, you know. And Bill always
[8:05] Speaker 1: sat in this kind of old beat up leather chair. But,
[8:09] Speaker 1: you know, he did instruct me indeed and tell me
[8:11] Speaker 1: things I needed to know. But the abiding sense I
[8:15] Speaker 1: got from Bill Quinn was peace. I always came away
[8:19] Speaker 1: just feeling peaceful because he was a man from whom
[8:23] Speaker 1: the fruits of the Holy Spirit were dropping. He was
[8:26] Speaker 1: dropping off the tree. But peace was his great marker.
[8:30] Speaker 1: I think, too, of my dear friend, Father Paul Murray,
[8:33] Speaker 1: the Dominican spiritual writer based in Rome. And I see
[8:37] Speaker 1: Paul whenever I go to Rome. We always have lunch
[8:39] Speaker 1: or dinner together. And I brought perfect strangers to dinner
[8:42] Speaker 1: that never met him before. And they'll say the same thing. Like,
[8:46] Speaker 1: I don't know what it is. I just feel peace
[8:48] Speaker 1: coming from this man. And that's a fruit of the
[8:52] Speaker 1: Holy Spirit when you're in love with God. Now, what
[8:55] Speaker 1: follows from those three? Well, the fourth one. In the
[8:59] Speaker 1: lovely old King James translation, it's called long-suffering. We call
[9:04] Speaker 1: it patience today. Patience. Look, if the Holy Spirit's in you,
[9:10] Speaker 1: that means your life's all about love. It's about willing
[9:12] Speaker 1: the good of the other. And that means you're willing
[9:15] Speaker 1: to put up with a lot. Do you know how
[9:18] Speaker 1: one of the spiritual works of mercy, one of my favorites,
[9:23] Speaker 1: is called bearing patiently the troublesome. putting up with annoying people. Well, see,
[9:29] Speaker 1: because you're not primarily about your own happiness. You're about
[9:33] Speaker 1: what's good for them. And so you'll put up with
[9:36] Speaker 1: a lot. Think of a parent and their children. I mean,
[9:40] Speaker 1: they'll suffer a lot on behalf of their children. That's
[9:43] Speaker 1: a mark the Holy Spirit's in you. You're impatient all
[9:46] Speaker 1: the time. Everyone's annoying to you. Well, that means your
[9:49] Speaker 1: life is ordered to your own ego and its desires.
[9:53] Speaker 1: Next one, gentleness. You know, one way to translate that
[9:57] Speaker 1: is simply kindness. And what I like about that is
[10:02] Speaker 1: talk about love can become abstract rather quickly. You know,
[10:05] Speaker 1: I love humanity. Yeah, but what does that look like
[10:10] Speaker 1: on the ground? How does that show up in the world? Well,
[10:14] Speaker 1: it shows up, I would say, in these basic acts
[10:17] Speaker 1: of kindness. That's a smile to someone, you know, who
[10:21] Speaker 1: needs a little encouragement. That's being kind to the server
[10:24] Speaker 1: at the restaurant and giving her a good tip. That's
[10:27] Speaker 1: opening a door for somebody. It's common courtesy, but that's beautiful.
[10:33] Speaker 1: That's one of the ways that love, willing the good
[10:36] Speaker 1: of the other, instantiates itself. Well, yeah, it's one of
[10:40] Speaker 1: the fruits of the Holy Spirit. A lot of unkindness
[10:44] Speaker 1: in our world today. Go on the internet sometime. That's
[10:48] Speaker 1: a sign the Holy Spirit is not operating in someone's life.
[10:52] Speaker 1: Here's the next one. Goodness, or you might translate it generosity.
[10:57] Speaker 1: The old principle goes back to Plato. Bonum diffusivum sui.
[11:03] Speaker 1: It means the good is diffusive of itself. It gives
[11:09] Speaker 1: itself away. Think of when you're in a good mood,
[11:12] Speaker 1: you don't hide in your room. When you're in a
[11:14] Speaker 1: good mood, you want to go out and be with people,
[11:16] Speaker 1: and you kind of bubble over. Right. When the Holy
[11:19] Speaker 1: Spirit's in you, one of the signs is this great
[11:22] Speaker 1: generosity of spirit. Goodness. You're interested in people. You want
[11:27] Speaker 1: them to have what you have, you know? It's not
[11:30] Speaker 1: this sort of self-preoccupied, self-protective stance. Goodness. Bonum diffusivum sui.
[11:38] Speaker 1: Here's one I love. Next one, we could translate it
[11:42] Speaker 1: as something like fidelity. It's often rendered as faith here,
[11:47] Speaker 1: but faith can mean like, you know, in the theological sense.
[11:50] Speaker 1: I think it's in the more ordinary sense of faithfulness, fidelity, reliability. See,
[11:57] Speaker 1: that's a mark of the Holy Spirit too. That's a
[12:00] Speaker 1: sign of love as it shows up in the world.
[12:03] Speaker 1: Things like keeping your promises, things like honoring your contract,
[12:08] Speaker 1: doing what you said you'd do. You're faithful. You're reliable.
[12:13] Speaker 1: You know, if people make all kinds of promises, then
[12:15] Speaker 1: they renege on the promise. Well, that's not an act
[12:17] Speaker 1: of love. That's an act of self-service. Faithful people, and
[12:21] Speaker 1: I've known a lot in my life, you know, it's
[12:23] Speaker 1: a wonderful quality to have. That guy's reliable. That woman,
[12:27] Speaker 1: you know what she says, she'll stick by it. Well,
[12:30] Speaker 1: that's a face of love. That's all that is. Next, meekness.
[12:37] Speaker 1: You know, I know, who wants to be called meek?
[12:39] Speaker 1: It's kind of a weak word in English. Here's how
[12:42] Speaker 1: Aquinas characterizes that. He said meekness is the quality of
[12:46] Speaker 1: being able to curb anger. Now, Aquinas will say, for example,
[12:51] Speaker 1: anger is not bad in itself. There's justifiable anger, righteous anger. Good.
[12:57] Speaker 1: But there's also anger that becomes an expression of hatred
[13:00] Speaker 1: and violence. Are you able to curb your anger? A
[13:06] Speaker 1: lot of people, I mean, if you're involved in the
[13:08] Speaker 1: pastoral life at all, you'll discover it very quickly. A
[13:11] Speaker 1: lot of people whose lives become dominated by anger. The
[13:15] Speaker 1: ability to curb that and say, all right, I'm not
[13:18] Speaker 1: going to fly off the handle. I'm not going to
[13:20] Speaker 1: do something irrational, even though you've hurt me. Well, that's
[13:23] Speaker 1: a face of love, isn't it? I'm willing your good
[13:27] Speaker 1: more than to satisfy my own emotional needs. I'll do
[13:32] Speaker 1: one more in the remaining seconds I've got, and that's
[13:34] Speaker 1: the last one. Temperance or self-control. Aquinas' Latin rendered that
[13:41] Speaker 1: as castitas, chastity. Can I put a special stress on
[13:46] Speaker 1: that form of self-control, namely sexual self-control? I've said it
[13:51] Speaker 1: a million times. The Catholic Church is not puritanical. We're
[13:53] Speaker 1: not anti-sex. But we are opposed to sexual desire that
[13:59] Speaker 1: becomes so dominant that it undermines the path of love.
[14:03] Speaker 1: And you know exactly what I'm talking about. is we
[14:06] Speaker 1: allow the sexual passion to run amok in such a
[14:08] Speaker 1: way that we use people as means to an end.
[14:13] Speaker 1: We reduce them to objects for our satisfaction. Now, look.
[14:17] Speaker 1: Everyone listening knows what I'm talking about and knows how
[14:21] Speaker 1: pervasive things like pornography and the hookup culture are. See,
[14:26] Speaker 1: all of that, don't think, oh, you know, ta-ta, don't
[14:28] Speaker 1: be so hung up. No, no. Those are severe violations
[14:31] Speaker 1: of love because now you're not willing the good of
[14:34] Speaker 1: the other. You're reducing the other to an object for
[14:37] Speaker 1: your manipulation. So it's not being puritanical. That's the way
[14:40] Speaker 1: the devil, I think, wants us to own or don't
[14:43] Speaker 1: pay attention to that. No, no, it's a very pressing
[14:46] Speaker 1: problem in our society. One of the fruits of the
[14:48] Speaker 1: Holy Spirit, therefore, is a chastity, is a continence and self-control,
[14:55] Speaker 1: especially over the sexual dimension of our lives. All right, everybody,
[15:00] Speaker 1: on Pentecost Sunday, the coming of the Holy Spirit. How
[15:03] Speaker 1: do you get these gifts? You can't really earn them.
[15:07] Speaker 1: You can't really practice your way toward them. You have
[15:11] Speaker 1: to ask God for them. I would say you want
[15:13] Speaker 1: these gifts, pray. You want these gifts, go to mass,
[15:17] Speaker 1: go to the sacraments and be open to the influence
[15:21] Speaker 1: of the Holy Spirit. And then what will you find?
[15:23] Speaker 1: Just as kind of the life within the vine or
[15:27] Speaker 1: the plant or the tree naturally gives rise to fruit,
[15:31] Speaker 1: you will find these fruits naturally coming to expression in
[15:35] Speaker 1: you Blessed Pentecost to everybody, and God bless you.

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