# Pray, Serve, Evangelize - Bishop Robert Barron Daily Sermons

An episode of [Daily Sermons With Bishop Robert Barron](https://invisiblenetwork.ai/podcast/6783446284), 4 Jul 2026, 13 min.

Audio: https://dts.podtrac.com/redirect.mp3/api.spreaker.com/download/episode/72754545/pray_serve_evangelize_bishop_barron_s_sunday_sermon.mp3



## Transcript

[0:00] Speaker 1: Peace be with you friends all during this year we're
[0:02] Speaker 1: reading from the Gospel of Mark, and Mark is such
[0:05] Speaker 1: a fascinating literary work. You know, on the one hand,
[0:09] Speaker 1: it can seem rather primitive. The Greek is not sophisticated,
[0:13] Speaker 1: and Mark seems to write in this kind of, you know, breathless,
[0:16] Speaker 1: staccato manner. But I always find the more you look
[0:20] Speaker 1: at Saint Mark, the deeper you look, the more it
[0:23] Speaker 1: appears iconic. He's presenting scene after scene in a very
[0:28] Speaker 1: concentrated way, telling us some rather deep truth about the faith. Well,
[0:33] Speaker 1: our gospel for today we're still in chapter one. By
[0:35] Speaker 1: the way of Mark is a good example of this.
[0:39] Speaker 1: Let me put this in your minds first, Pope Benedict,
[0:42] Speaker 1: and I've often shared.
[0:44] Speaker 2: This with you.
[0:45] Speaker 1: Pope Benedict said, the church does three essential things. It
[0:50] Speaker 1: worships God, it serves the poor, and it evangelizes. Those
[0:56] Speaker 1: are the three basic things, and everything else in the
[0:58] Speaker 1: life of the church is under one of those headings.
[1:01] Speaker 1: I remember a Cardinal George who was a great mentor
[1:03] Speaker 1: to me, and he was a great devotee of Pulp Benedict.
[1:06] Speaker 1: He said, think about the institutional commitments of the church.
[1:10] Speaker 1: When the church wants to build something or invest money
[1:13] Speaker 1: in something. What do they do well in churches, in
[1:17] Speaker 1: hospitals and schools. Well, there it is to worship God.
[1:21] Speaker 1: The churches, hospitals that's you know, serving the poor, to
[1:25] Speaker 1: heal those who are sick, and schools places where we evangelize. Well,
[1:31] Speaker 1: go right back now to chapter one of Mark, and
[1:33] Speaker 1: I think you see these three moves on clear display.
[1:38] Speaker 1: Rising very early before dawn. He Jesus left and went
[1:44] Speaker 1: off to a deserted place where he prayed. The first
[1:49] Speaker 1: basic thing the church does is it praise? Why because
[1:54] Speaker 1: Jesus prayed. The Church is the mystical body of Jesus,
[1:58] Speaker 1: the extension of Christ's energy and personality throughout the centuries.
[2:03] Speaker 1: Jesus prayed, so the church praise. I remember this is
[2:08] Speaker 1: many years ago when I was still a bishop out
[2:10] Speaker 1: in California and we had our odd Limina visit with
[2:14] Speaker 1: Pope Francis, and it's all the bishops of California. There
[2:16] Speaker 1: are like forty of us in this big room with
[2:19] Speaker 1: the Pope, and he spoke.
[2:20] Speaker 2: To us for three hours. I remember he was talking
[2:23] Speaker 2: about at.
[2:23] Speaker 1: One point the basic relationships a bishop has to.
[2:27] Speaker 2: Have, and he said, you know your relation.
[2:29] Speaker 1: With your brother bishops, your relation to your priests, your
[2:33] Speaker 1: relation to your people. But then he said, it's really
[2:37] Speaker 1: vivid in my mind. He pointed upward. He was speaking Italian.
[2:42] Speaker 1: He said, but first, it's the relation coniis signora connius signora.
[2:49] Speaker 2: With the Lord, with the Lord.
[2:51] Speaker 1: And he kept his finger pointing up in the air
[2:54] Speaker 1: as if to say, the other relationships aren't going to
[2:57] Speaker 1: mount to anything unless they're grounded in a relationship to
[3:02] Speaker 1: the Lord. Still true, everybody, unless like Jesus, we go
[3:08] Speaker 1: off at least symbolically speaking to a deserted place to pray,
[3:14] Speaker 1: everything else in our Christian life is going to fall
[3:16] Speaker 1: apart or devolve into something it shouldn't be. Now, what
[3:21] Speaker 1: does the desert place look like? It might be a
[3:25] Speaker 1: holy hour. That's what I try to do every single morning.
[3:28] Speaker 1: I'm a morning person, so I get up early and
[3:31] Speaker 1: the first hour of the day I spend in the chapel,
[3:35] Speaker 1: in this deserted place where I'm not I'm not in
[3:38] Speaker 1: touch with anybody else, I'm not doing anything in particular.
[3:42] Speaker 1: I'm trying to maintain that relationship Cone Signore. Maybe for
[3:47] Speaker 1: you it's the car. A car can be a good
[3:49] Speaker 1: place to pray. When we're kind of isolated from the
[3:53] Speaker 1: distractions of the world and we kind of move into
[3:55] Speaker 1: a more meditative frame of mind, maybe it's time you
[3:59] Speaker 1: spend it at me as maybe instance, a morning prayer.
[4:02] Speaker 1: You can find some special time. I don't care what
[4:07] Speaker 1: it is, but unless we pray, we are not going
[4:12] Speaker 1: to be successful in the spiritual order period. You know.
[4:15] Speaker 2: Now, I'm a bishop of a diocesan.
[4:17] Speaker 1: We do a lot that we meet to talk about
[4:19] Speaker 1: all sorts of things, all the different activities of the diocesan,
[4:23] Speaker 1: a lot of you know, pragmatic, practical financial decisions have
[4:26] Speaker 1: to be made. But I try to remind everybody around
[4:30] Speaker 1: me and myself Conni Signore. Unless we're rooted in prayer,
[4:38] Speaker 1: all our practical activities are going to mount to nothing, or,
[4:43] Speaker 1: as I say, they'll devolve into something they oughtn't to be.
[4:46] Speaker 1: So the church praise that comes first. But no, listen,
[4:52] Speaker 1: I'm leaving this out of God. Jesus entered the house
[4:54] Speaker 1: of Simon. Simon's mother in law lay sick with a fever.
[5:00] Speaker 1: Her grasped her hand, helped her up. Then the fever
[5:03] Speaker 1: left her. When it was evening after sunset. They brought
[5:06] Speaker 1: to him all who were ill or possessed by demons.
[5:10] Speaker 1: The whole town was gathered at the door. He cured many,
[5:14] Speaker 1: he drove out many demons. Here's the second grade task
[5:19] Speaker 1: of the church, church praise. Secondly, the church serves the poor.
[5:24] Speaker 1: Now the poor in every expression of poverty. Yes, it
[5:28] Speaker 1: means the economically poor, but it means the emotionally poor.
[5:32] Speaker 1: It means the spiritually poor. It means the intellectually poor.
[5:36] Speaker 1: It means those who are who are poor because they.
[5:38] Speaker 2: Haven't heard the word of God.
[5:41] Speaker 1: The second basic task of the church listen, now, born
[5:45] Speaker 1: of prayer is service. Now, why why, it's very simple.
[5:52] Speaker 1: When you're Coni signore right, you're with the Lord. Who
[5:57] Speaker 1: is the Lord. Well, God is love, we're told in
[6:02] Speaker 1: the First Letter of John. Therefore, the more you are
[6:06] Speaker 1: in touch with God, the more devoted to love you
[6:11] Speaker 1: will be, or better, the more that divine love will
[6:16] Speaker 1: start flowing through you into the world.
[6:20] Speaker 2: Gosh, who's the best example of this is Mother Teresa.
[6:22] Speaker 1: Of Calcutta, who spent hours of her day Connee signore
[6:28] Speaker 1: right in prayer, in very focused, concentrated prayer. But then
[6:33] Speaker 1: how marvelously that grace of God surged through her into
[6:38] Speaker 1: the world. We serve the poor. Think, now, you know
[6:44] Speaker 1: we're not Mother Teresa. Okay, maybe you're not. You're not
[6:47] Speaker 1: a professional religious person.
[6:49] Speaker 2: Okay.
[6:49] Speaker 1: But everyone who prays and feels this divine love coming
[6:55] Speaker 1: through him or her should now look at the world
[6:58] Speaker 1: around and say, where are people suffering here?
[7:02] Speaker 2: Where are people who are in pain? Who's sick? Here?
[7:05] Speaker 2: Who needs to be healed? Now they all came rushing
[7:09] Speaker 2: to Jesus.
[7:09] Speaker 1: But we who are members of his mystical body, we're
[7:14] Speaker 1: supposed to be other Christs. Through our love and our service,
[7:20] Speaker 1: we reach out to a hurting world.
[7:24] Speaker 2: Good. Good.
[7:25] Speaker 1: That's the second great task of the church, okay. And
[7:30] Speaker 1: what's the third church?
[7:32] Speaker 2: Praise?
[7:32] Speaker 1: The church serves the poor and finding the church evangelizes. Listen,
[7:38] Speaker 1: I'm still in this passage for today. Simon and those
[7:43] Speaker 1: who are with him pursued him, and upon finding him said,
[7:46] Speaker 1: everyone's looking for you. He told them, let us go
[7:51] Speaker 1: to the nearby villages that I may preach there also
[7:56] Speaker 1: for this purpose?
[7:57] Speaker 2: Have I come?
[8:00] Speaker 1: Jesus prays yep, Jesus serves and heals yep.
[8:04] Speaker 2: And He's come primarily to preach.
[8:11] Speaker 1: To proclaim the word of God, to evangelize.
[8:17] Speaker 2: Repent, the Kingdom of God is at hand. Believe the
[8:21] Speaker 2: good news.
[8:22] Speaker 1: That's the message that he preached all over Galilee. The
[8:27] Speaker 1: church the mystical body of Jesus, carrying on his task
[8:31] Speaker 1: across the centuries. Therefore, evangelizes, proclaims, preaches, teaches.
[8:40] Speaker 2: Now beautifully the church gives us as a.
[8:43] Speaker 1: Second reading today from Paul in his First Corinthians, and
[8:47] Speaker 1: it's Paul reflecting on his evangelizing work.
[8:51] Speaker 2: As Paul.
[8:52] Speaker 1: Look, he's the evangelist par accidence in the whole tradition.
[8:56] Speaker 1: Listen out to Paul speaking to the church in corinth
[9:01] Speaker 1: If I preach the Gospel, there's no reason for me
[9:04] Speaker 1: to boast, for an obligation has been imposed on me,
[9:11] Speaker 1: and woe to me if I do not preach it. Now,
[9:16] Speaker 1: that's the language of a real Christian. Everybody, what's evangelization? Oh,
[9:21] Speaker 1: I guess if you get around to it, or that's
[9:23] Speaker 1: for other people to do, or you know, if it's
[9:26] Speaker 1: really the right circumstance, I guess I'll evangelize, or maybe
[9:29] Speaker 1: if I'm not too embarrassed.
[9:31] Speaker 2: No, no, no, none of that.
[9:34] Speaker 1: An obligation has been imposed on me, and woe to
[9:38] Speaker 1: me if I do not preach it. That's the voice
[9:42] Speaker 1: of the church up and down the ages. We pray yep,
[9:46] Speaker 1: we serve the poor, yep, And we evangelize, we speak
[9:52] Speaker 1: the word, we bring people to Christ.
[9:56] Speaker 2: Now listen as Paul specifies his method. Listen to him.
[10:02] Speaker 1: I've made myself a slave to all so as to
[10:06] Speaker 1: win over.
[10:07] Speaker 2: As many as possible.
[10:08] Speaker 1: Think about that is someone speaking in a culture that
[10:11] Speaker 1: knew about slavery, right, it was not an abstraction for him.
[10:15] Speaker 2: I become a slave to all. In other words, he's
[10:18] Speaker 2: so possessed.
[10:19] Speaker 1: By this obligation to evangelize that he's not that concerned
[10:23] Speaker 1: about his ego and about his career and about advancing himself. No, no,
[10:27] Speaker 1: I'll become a slave to anybody if that serves to
[10:32] Speaker 1: bring them to Christ, to win over as many as possible. See,
[10:37] Speaker 1: that's his priority is winning souls for Christ.
[10:40] Speaker 2: Listen now as he goes on beautifully to the week.
[10:44] Speaker 2: I became weak to win over the week. I've become
[10:48] Speaker 2: all things to all to save at least some.
[10:52] Speaker 1: Okay, if being weak makes me effective with people who
[10:56] Speaker 1: are weak, I'll do it. If being strong with those
[10:59] Speaker 1: who are strong works, fine, I'll do that too. I
[11:02] Speaker 1: don't care whatever works, because I'm on fire with a
[11:06] Speaker 1: desire to evangelize.
[11:08] Speaker 2: You know, I think if here.
[11:09] Speaker 1: Everybody, one of the greatest evangelists in our tradition, Saint
[11:12] Speaker 1: Francis Xavier, when he goes over to India, Well, in India,
[11:17] Speaker 1: holy people lived in great austerity, and you know, I'll
[11:21] Speaker 1: basically be naked and covering their hair and dust and
[11:25] Speaker 1: so on and so forth. So Francis Xavier's are okay,
[11:28] Speaker 1: if I'm going to reach these people, I'll have to
[11:30] Speaker 1: live that way. But then go to one of his successors,
[11:34] Speaker 1: Matteo Ricci, when he's going into China. And in China,
[11:38] Speaker 1: holy people were at the royal court and live and
[11:41] Speaker 1: wore elegant clothes.
[11:42] Speaker 2: Okay, that's what I'll do. I'll become weak with the weak,
[11:45] Speaker 2: I'll become strong with the strong. I'll become poor with
[11:48] Speaker 2: the poor, rich with the with the elegant. I don't care, because.
[11:52] Speaker 1: What I want to do is evangelize. Woe to me
[11:57] Speaker 1: if I do not evangelize. See look every woe to
[12:01] Speaker 1: the church if it doesn't pray. Then our evangelization becomes rationalistic,
[12:06] Speaker 1: our service becomes social work. Woe to the church. If
[12:10] Speaker 1: it does not serve. It doesn't serve the poor, then
[12:12] Speaker 1: our worship of God becomes an abstraction. Then evangelization is
[12:16] Speaker 1: just a show, and woe to the church if it
[12:20] Speaker 1: does not evangelize. If we think that somehow, you know,
[12:23] Speaker 1: being of service to the poor, that's enough. No, no, no,
[12:27] Speaker 1: it's indispensable, but it's not enough. It's all three of these.
[12:33] Speaker 1: The church prays, the Church serves the poor, The Church
[12:37] Speaker 1: evangelizes from Mark chapter one all the way up to
[12:42] Speaker 1: the present day. And God bless you.

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