# Bishop Barron's Sermon - You Will Never Truly Live If You Keep Living in Fear!

An episode of [Daily Sermons With Bishop Robert Barron](https://invisiblenetwork.ai/podcast/6783446284), 12 Sep 2026, 14 min.

Audio: https://dts.podtrac.com/redirect.mp3/api.spreaker.com/download/episode/74918829/bishop_barron_s_sermon_you_will_never_truly_live_if_you_keep_living_in_fear.mp3



## Transcript

[0:00] Speaker 1: Peace be with you. We come to the second Sunday
[0:02] Speaker 1: of Lent, and the readings are always rich during Lent
[0:05] Speaker 1: because we're getting back to spiritual basics. The church wants
[0:08] Speaker 1: us to really reflect on some of these elemental truths
[0:11] Speaker 1: in the spiritual life. And this is a good example.
[0:14] Speaker 1: I want to start with the first reading, which is
[0:17] Speaker 1: from the book of Genesis, and it's talking about Abraham.
[0:19] Speaker 1: And everybody, whatever the Bible talks about Abraham, our ears
[0:23] Speaker 1: should perk up. Our eyes should get more focused because
[0:27] Speaker 1: he's our father in faith. He's the one through whom
[0:31] Speaker 1: the rescue operation commences. Whatever we have of faith, in
[0:39] Speaker 1: a way, is just imitating what Abraham had. So we
[0:42] Speaker 1: pay special attention. Well, listen now to what the Lord said.
[0:47] Speaker 1: The Lord said to Abram, that's what they call him
[0:49] Speaker 1: here before the name was changed, go forth from the
[0:53] Speaker 1: land of your kinsfolk and from your father's house to
[0:56] Speaker 1: a land that I will show you. And then I'll
[1:01] Speaker 1: make you a great nation, right? And all the communities
[1:04] Speaker 1: of the earth shall find their blessing in you. Well,
[1:07] Speaker 1: can I suggest to you, this is at the heart
[1:10] Speaker 1: of the spiritual life. Now, why? Well, as Augustine said,
[1:14] Speaker 1: and I often quote him here, sin is the state
[1:16] Speaker 1: of being curvatus in se, which means caved in upon oneself.
[1:23] Speaker 1: Sin is always like a black hole that draws everything,
[1:27] Speaker 1: including my own powers, kind of inwards. God has made
[1:32] Speaker 1: us to go out from the self, to experience the
[1:36] Speaker 1: splendor of reality. The more I let go of myself
[1:41] Speaker 1: and my prerogatives, the less I try to grasp and
[1:44] Speaker 1: hang on to things, the more alive I become. It's
[1:48] Speaker 1: a basic biblical principle. And I suggest, therefore, salvation has
[1:53] Speaker 1: a lot to do with adventure. I don't want to
[1:57] Speaker 1: sound trivial in saying that, but it's true, I think,
[2:00] Speaker 1: that there's something adventurous about the saints, something safe and
[2:07] Speaker 1: protected about those who don't want to walk the path
[2:11] Speaker 1: that God gives them. That's the challenge. You know, you
[2:15] Speaker 1: can see it in all the great hero's journeys stories.
[2:22] Speaker 1: You know, the Lord of the Rings maybe is the
[2:24] Speaker 1: best example because the hobbits, you know, think of Bilbo
[2:27] Speaker 1: in the first one and Frodo in the second. They
[2:29] Speaker 1: begin in their little quaint, you know, hobbiton, and they're
[2:33] Speaker 1: in their little hobbit holes, and they're very safe and
[2:36] Speaker 1: cozy in the fireplace and doilies on the furniture, and
[2:40] Speaker 1: everything's very blandly domestic. And the story gets going when
[2:45] Speaker 1: they're called on adventure to go out from that cozy,
[2:49] Speaker 1: warm domesticity and take on a dangerous journey away from
[2:56] Speaker 1: the self and Again, I think you see in all
[3:00] Speaker 1: those great stories that the hero's identity is found in
[3:05] Speaker 1: this letting go. Star Wars, the same thing, right? Luke
[3:09] Speaker 1: Skywalker has to leave the cozy house where he is
[3:12] Speaker 1: with his aunt and uncle. Then the adventure begins. Well,
[3:17] Speaker 1: the same is true, I think, in The Order of Salvation.
[3:20] Speaker 1: Something about letting go, leaving home, not clinging to safety—
[3:28] Speaker 1: I've often said this. I've been saying it a lot
[3:30] Speaker 1: when I talk to young people because, gosh, our culture
[3:33] Speaker 1: is preoccupied with the question of safety. I get it.
[3:38] Speaker 1: We all want to be safe. No one enters their
[3:43] Speaker 1: day just courting danger at every turn. However, when my
[3:47] Speaker 1: entire psyche is predicated upon being safe, I will never
[3:53] Speaker 1: be alive. I'll never become the person I'm meant to be.
[3:58] Speaker 1: I got to break out of this little cocoon and
[4:02] Speaker 1: come to the person I'm meant to be. Well, that's Abraham.
[4:05] Speaker 1: Come on, Abraham, get up. Leave your father's house and
[4:08] Speaker 1: your family and what you're familiar with and go on
[4:13] Speaker 1: an adventure. Mind you, to a land that I will
[4:16] Speaker 1: show you. See, it's not Abraham in command of his
[4:20] Speaker 1: own life. It's Abraham willing to surrender to the summons
[4:25] Speaker 1: of God. That's when you come alive. Well, whenever I
[4:30] Speaker 1: think about this, I go back over the course of
[4:32] Speaker 1: my own life and notice all these times when I
[4:37] Speaker 1: heard a similar sort of summons. Moments when I stepped
[4:43] Speaker 1: out of cozy domesticity, what I knew, what I was
[4:47] Speaker 1: familiar with, where I felt safe, and was called on
[4:51] Speaker 1: an adventure. Look, it goes right back to, I remember
[4:53] Speaker 1: it very vividly as many years ago, of course, First grade,
[4:57] Speaker 1: when I left home and I'm in the corridors of
[5:01] Speaker 1: this school building and who are these people? What am
[5:05] Speaker 1: I doing here? And feeling just kind of lost and disoriented. Well,
[5:10] Speaker 1: of course, I'd left behind. I had started off on
[5:13] Speaker 1: an adventure. Gosh, I remember the changing schools when I
[5:19] Speaker 1: was in fourth grade. Our family moved back to Chicago
[5:21] Speaker 1: area and I had to leave all the friends I
[5:24] Speaker 1: had I was now familiar with that school, but I
[5:28] Speaker 1: had to leave that one behind. I remember in fourth
[5:30] Speaker 1: grade just kind of wandering around the playground during recess.
[5:33] Speaker 1: I didn't know anybody. It was brand new to me. Painful, yeah. Safe?
[5:39] Speaker 1: Not really. But it was the commencement of an adventure. Heck,
[5:43] Speaker 1: I remember... My first day in high school, same thing.
[5:46] Speaker 1: By eighth grade, I'd become so accustomed to that school.
[5:50] Speaker 1: I was a basketball player. I was a well-known figure
[5:53] Speaker 1: in the school, lots of friends. And then suddenly, I'm
[5:57] Speaker 1: in this new high school and the same thing. Who
[6:00] Speaker 1: are these people? Where am I? What am I doing here?
[6:03] Speaker 1: Of course, I was attracted to going back to the
[6:06] Speaker 1: way it was, but there is no going back. No, no,
[6:09] Speaker 1: you keep moving forward out of safe spaces into adventures
[6:15] Speaker 1: You know, maybe the most dramatic example of this in
[6:19] Speaker 1: my life came some years after that when I was
[6:22] Speaker 1: sent to Paris for my doctoral studies. So I was, what,
[6:26] Speaker 1: about 28 or 29 years old, and I'd been ordained
[6:30] Speaker 1: a priest, and I was working in my parish and
[6:33] Speaker 1: loved it, and loved the people there, and I was
[6:36] Speaker 1: a healthy, happy priest. And then, okay, I'm sent on
[6:41] Speaker 1: an adventure. Go to Europe, which I'd always dreamed about.
[6:44] Speaker 1: Go to Paris, which is a city I always had
[6:47] Speaker 1: a great affection for, and leave everything you know. I
[6:50] Speaker 1: remember arriving in Paris and talking about feeling lost. Here
[6:57] Speaker 1: was this foreign city I'd never been to before. I
[7:01] Speaker 1: arrive at the house, the Redemptor's house in Paris, and
[7:04] Speaker 1: everyone's speaking French, and I didn't know a soul. I
[7:08] Speaker 1: remember the first night very well, sitting on the bed
[7:11] Speaker 1: in my room, and I could hear Down in the courtyard,
[7:14] Speaker 1: they were having dinner and all this kind of festive laughter.
[7:17] Speaker 1: I thought, what am I doing here? How did this
[7:19] Speaker 1: happen to me? Well, gosh, now, fast forward many years
[7:23] Speaker 1: after that. I'm in Chicago. I'm rector of Mundelein Seminary.
[7:27] Speaker 1: It's a job I loved. Knew everybody. Everyone knew me.
[7:31] Speaker 1: I was very comfortable in that job. Loved it. I
[7:35] Speaker 1: had my word on fire ministry in Chicago. Surrounded by
[7:38] Speaker 1: friends and family. You know, life was good. And then...
[7:42] Speaker 1: A call comes from the Apostolic Nuncio. The Holy Father
[7:45] Speaker 1: has appointed you auxiliary bishop of Los Angeles. Los Angeles?
[7:50] Speaker 1: How did that happen? Okay, I was summoned again out
[7:56] Speaker 1: of cozy domesticity, a world that I knew very well,
[8:01] Speaker 1: out of a safe space, into an adventure. How many
[8:05] Speaker 1: times when I got to LA and then Santa Barbara
[8:08] Speaker 1: where I lived, how many times in that first year
[8:10] Speaker 1: did I say, Where am I? What happened to me?
[8:15] Speaker 1: Who are these people? But again, that's how it works.
[8:21] Speaker 1: You're called forth from yourself into an adventure. And then,
[8:26] Speaker 1: of course, it happened, what, six years after that, another
[8:29] Speaker 1: phone call comes from another apostolic museo. The Holy Father
[8:32] Speaker 1: has appointed you Bishop of Winona, Rochester. And so here
[8:36] Speaker 1: I am right now in a studio in Rochester, Minnesota,
[8:40] Speaker 1: And again, when I arrived here, same thing. How did
[8:44] Speaker 1: this happen? Where am I? Well, it's what the Lord
[8:48] Speaker 1: does with us, I think. It's what he does. The
[8:53] Speaker 1: life of holiness is a life of adventure, of an
[8:56] Speaker 1: opening to the new possibility, to the adventure of the real.
[9:01] Speaker 1: It's avoiding this move, caving in around yourself, hanging on
[9:07] Speaker 1: to what you've got, Staying in your familiar safe space. No, no, no.
[9:12] Speaker 1: That's not it. Time for adventure. Okay. All of that, everybody,
[9:17] Speaker 1: is a preparation for our gospel, which is the great
[9:21] Speaker 1: story of the transfiguration. Jesus leads his three most intimate disciples, Peter, James,
[9:28] Speaker 1: and John, up the mountain, right? And then it says
[9:30] Speaker 1: he was transfigured before them. Well, the word there in Greek, metamorphothē,
[9:39] Speaker 1: Morphe means form. Meta means beyond, right? Think metamorphosis, the
[9:45] Speaker 1: way the caterpillar becomes the butterfly. It begins in this
[9:52] Speaker 1: very narrow, cocooned space and then bursting forth. This metamorphosis happens.
[10:00] Speaker 1: That's what we're talking about here. What had been relatively
[10:05] Speaker 1: hidden in the life of Jesus, namely his divinity, is
[10:10] Speaker 1: now allowed for this brief moment to shine forth. And
[10:15] Speaker 1: so we hear that his face became dazzlingly white and
[10:18] Speaker 1: his clothes He's manifesting his divine nature. And then we
[10:26] Speaker 1: hear that he's conversing with Moses and Elijah. Well, how
[10:30] Speaker 1: do you converse with people who lived hundreds of years
[10:33] Speaker 1: before you? Unless, listen, you've moved out of the normal
[10:40] Speaker 1: dimensional system of space and time. You've moved to a
[10:44] Speaker 1: higher pitch of existence. In that heavenly place, that luminous,
[10:50] Speaker 1: transfigured place, Jesus is able to speak across space and
[10:55] Speaker 1: time to Moses and Elijah. And then the voice, this
[11:01] Speaker 1: is my beloved son, listen to him, the voice of
[11:05] Speaker 1: God the Father himself. What's revealed, everybody, is the way
[11:12] Speaker 1: of being to which Jesus is calling all of us.
[11:20] Speaker 1: Thomas Aquinas said this, that the purpose of the transfiguration
[11:25] Speaker 1: was to show to the apostles, even now as they're
[11:28] Speaker 1: making their way through the difficulties and drudgeries of this
[11:31] Speaker 1: life and the struggles of it, even now to give
[11:35] Speaker 1: them a sense of the glory to come. That's the
[11:40] Speaker 1: world on high to which you are called. Giving them
[11:47] Speaker 1: the courage, listen now, To let go. Not to cling
[11:53] Speaker 1: to this body in this world. Sure, we love this world.
[12:00] Speaker 1: It's the world that we know. The people around us,
[12:03] Speaker 1: the things around us, we're used to this world. Yeah,
[12:07] Speaker 1: but all throughout life, and all the examples I gave,
[12:11] Speaker 1: all throughout life we're being summoned beyond, beyond, beyond. Let go.
[12:15] Speaker 1: Let go. More. Now let go of that. More. Now
[12:19] Speaker 1: let go of that. There's more. Can we sense that, everybody?
[12:25] Speaker 1: All of that was but a preparation for this final
[12:32] Speaker 1: transition to which we are called. Let go of your
[12:38] Speaker 1: father's house. Let go of your hometown, meaning the hometown
[12:43] Speaker 1: of this world. Let go and trust in God who's
[12:50] Speaker 1: calling us to be transfigured. Don't we say that in heaven,
[12:58] Speaker 1: we will participate in the spiritualized body of Jesus. We
[13:03] Speaker 1: will become like unto him, transfigured in glory. How do
[13:11] Speaker 1: we read our lives? Maybe as a long series of
[13:16] Speaker 1: of rehearsals for this great letting go, which amounts to rebirth.
[13:26] Speaker 1: It amounts to the final realization of our salvation in heaven.
[13:33] Speaker 1: And God bless you.

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