Podcasts · Religion & Spirituality

Bishop Barron’s Sunday Sermons - Catholic Preaching and Homilies

Bishop Robert Barron

300 episodes

A weekly homily podcast from Bishop Robert Barron, produced by Word on Fire Catholic Ministries.

Episodes page 1 of 6

  1. With All Your Heart, Soul, and Mind

    · 15 min · Episode 507

    Friends, our Gospel this Sunday is from the twenty-second chapter of the Gospel of Matthew. Jesus has been doing battle with the scribes and Pharisees, and this passage brings that great argument to a conclusion in an…

  2. The Coin Belongs to Caesar, But Caeser Belongs to God

    · 15 min · Episode 506

    Friends, on this Twenty-ninth Sunday of the year, our Gospel features the question from the Pharisees about paying taxes. In response to the trap, Jesus offers one of the most famous one-liners in history: “Repay to…

  3. The Invitation Has Been Offered

    · 15 min · Episode 505

    Friends, our Gospel today is the parable of the wedding banquet, and like all the parables, it’s kind of unsettling. What we’re meant to see is that this invitation from the king is the greatest invitation possible.…

  4. The Peace of Christ

    · 15 min · Episode 504

    Friends, in our second reading this Sunday, Paul tells the church of Philippi, “Have no anxiety at all.” It’s hard to imagine that Paul—who was shipwrecked many times, beaten within an inch of his life, threatened and…

  5. The Hubris of Man, the Humility of God

    · 15 min · Episode 503

    Friends, our second reading, a passage from the second chapter of Paul to the Philippians, is one of the master texts in the New Testament. It’s not only ancient and poetic but also substantive; indeed, in some ways,…

  6. Love God—Not His Benefits

    · 15 min · Episode 502

    Friends for this Twenty-fifth Sunday in Ordinary Time, we hear a story from Jesus that tends to bother everybody: the parable of the laborers in the vineyard. We’re meant to hear our own voices in the complaint of…

  7. You Belong to the Lord

    · 15 min · Episode 501

    Friends, our Gospel for this Twenty-fourth Sunday in Ordinary Time is the familiar story of Peter asking the Lord how many times he should forgive his brother: “As many as seven times?” Jesus responds, “Not seven times…

  8. Will the Good of the Other

    · 15 min · Episode 500

    Friends, for the wokeist philosophy that dominates today, empathy—feeling the feelings of the other and not harming those feelings—is treated as a supreme value. But while empathy is perfectly good and decent, the…

  9. A Living Sacrifice

    · 15 min · Episode 499

    Friends, for this Twenty-second Sunday in Ordinary Time, I want to begin with our very brief second reading from Paul to the Romans. It opens, “I urge you, brothers and sisters, by the mercies of God, to offer your…

  10. The Church Prevails

    · 15 min · Episode 498

    Friends, for this Twenty-first Sunday in Ordinary Time, the Church brings us once again, with Jesus and the disciples, to Caesarea Philippi, and to a famous question: “Who do you say that I am?” The main characters in…

  11. How Not to Read the Story of the Syrophoenician Woman

    · 16 min · Episode 497

    Friends, for this Twentieth Sunday in Ordinary Time, we hear the story of the Syrophoenician woman. Jesus famously puts off this woman—first by ignoring her, then by dismissing her, and finally by insulting her—and she…

  12. A Tiny Whispering Voice

    · 15 min · Episode 496

    Friends, in my evangelical work online, I often encounter people who are skeptical of religion and dismissive of its claims. I usually ask them: How do we explain the intelligibility of the world or our ability to…

  13. The Heart of Christianity

    · 15 min · Episode 495

    Friends, on this Eighteenth Sunday in Ordinary Time, I want to focus on the Second Reading from Saint Paul’s Letter to the Romans. The eighth chapter of Romans represents the culmination of an argument Paul’s been…

  14. What Life Is All About

    · 15 min · Episode 494

    Friends, we come to the Seventeenth Sunday in Ordinary Time, and we’re going to finish our reading of the thirteenth chapter of Matthew's Gospel, which deals with the parables. Jesus’s parables cut to the heart of the…

  15. All Things Work Together for Good

    · 16 min · Episode 493

    Friends, we continue this weekend reading from the thirteenth chapter of Matthew's Gospel, which is dedicated to the parables of Jesus. Today I want to focus on the thought-provoking and theologically rich parable of…

  16. Let the Word of God Take Root in You

    · 15 min · Episode 492

    Friends, on this Fifteenth Sunday in Ordinary Time, we continue our reading of the Gospel of Matthew. In chapter 13, Jesus gives a series of seven very memorable parables, the first four having to do with the growth of…

  17. Your King Shall Come to You

    · 15 min · Episode 491

    Friends, on this Fourteenth Sunday of Ordinary Time, our first reading is from the prophet Zechariah, who is a very important figure for the Lord Jesus. The prophet predicts the arrival of a king, meek and riding on a…

  18. Be Attached to God Alone

    · 15 min · Episode 490

    Friends, we’re reading this week again from the tenth chapter of Matthew’s Gospel, and Christ’s teaching here is—as always—astonishing: “Whoever loves father or mother more than me is not worthy of me,” Jesus says to…

  19. Fear No One

    · 15 min · Episode 489

    Friends, Jesus cannot be reduced to just one ethical teacher among many. But this doesn’t mean that his teaching isn’t important or astonishing—because it is! And I want to focus this week, and next, on our Gospel…

  20. Jesus Sees Something in You

    · 15 min · Episode 488

    Friends, on this Eleventh Sunday in Ordinary Time, the Gospel is about Jesus sending the Twelve on a mission. Whenever we hear about the Twelve, it’s the Church in seminal form. And here’s what I want to focus on: Whom…

  21. From the Exodus to the Eucharist

    · 15 min · Episode 487

    Friends, we’ve come to the great Solemnity of Corpus Christi—a celebration of the Body and Blood of Christ in the Eucharist. Our first reading mentions the “manna” that fed the Israelites in the desert—a mysterious…

  22. The Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit

    · 15 min · Episode 486

    Friends, we’ve come to Trinity Sunday, one of my favorite Sundays of the year. The Trinity is not just a little puzzle for theologians; it’s the heart of the matter, in many ways. Indeed, it’s central to the way we…

  23. Tongues of Fire

    · 16 min · Episode 485

    Friends, we’ve come to the great Solemnity of Pentecost, which is, along with Christmas and Easter, one of the most important feasts of the Christian year. It is the celebration par excellence of the Holy Spirit. It is…

  24. What Is the Spirit Calling You to Do?

    · 15 min · Episode 484

    Friends, today is the great Solemnity of the Ascension of the Lord, which is situated between Easter and Pentecost. The Ascension is when Jesus definitively moves into the higher dimension of heaven. And while we no…

  25. Five Signs of the Holy Spirit

    · 14 min · Episode 483

    Friends, we come to the Sixth Sunday of Easter, which means we’re coming to the end of the Easter season—and coming toward the Solemnity of Pentecost. After Christmas and Easter, this great feast of the Holy Spirit is…

  26. The Dwelling Place of God

    · 15 min · Episode 482

    Friends, on this Fifth Sunday of Easter, there’s a somewhat hidden theme that runs like a golden thread through the readings, and that theme is the temple. To understand the New Testament texts, we have to see the…

  27. Cut to the Heart

    · 15 min · Episode 481

    Friends, all during the Easter season, we read from the Acts of the Apostles, and this Sunday, we hear part of Peter’s oration on Pentecost morning. His bold proclamation is, in a way, the mother of all sermons; it is…

  28. The Pattern and Presence of Jesus

    · 15 min · Episode 480

    Friends, for this Third Sunday of Easter, we read once again the story of the two disciples on the road to Emmaus—a literary masterpiece, yes, but above all, a spiritual masterpiece. This story is not just about…

  29. Both His Wounds and His Peace

    · 15 min · Episode 479

    Friends, peace be with you—an echo of the words of the risen Jesus in our Gospel for the Second Sunday of Easter, also called Mercy Sunday. Christ gives his disciples the gift of shalom (peace). But there’s an…

  30. The Earthquake of the Resurrection

    · 15 min · Episode 478

    Friends, Happy Easter! We’ve come to the high point of the Church’s liturgical year, the reason why we’re Christians at all. If Jesus didn’t rise from the dead, Christianity is a waste of time; the resurrection is the…

  31. God Enters Into Our Darkness

    · 16 min · Episode 477

    Friends, we come now to Palm Sunday, also called “Passion Sunday” because we read, in its entirety, one of the Passion narratives from the Synoptic Gospels. This year, we hear Matthew’s version, and one of the…

  32. Jesus Wept

    · 16 min · Episode 476

    Friends, this Lent, we’ve been journeying through some marvelous stories in John: the woman at the well two weeks ago, the man born blind last week, and now the climactic story of the raising of Lazarus. The great…

  33. The Light of the World

    · 16 min · Episode 475

    Friends, on this Fourth Sunday of Lent, we hear the incomparably rich story of the man born blind, which has beguiled Christians up and down the centuries. We are meant to identify with this man: All of us are born…

  34. Thirsting for God

    · 15 min · Episode 474

    Friends, on this Third Sunday of Lent, we hear the story from John’s Gospel of the woman at the well—a kind of master class in evangelization. What is evangelization all about? It’s about telling starving people where…

  35. The Adventure of Salvation

    · 15 min · Episode 473

    Friends, on this Second Sunday of Lent, our first reading about Abraham and Matthew’s account of the Transfiguration orient us to a basic biblical principle. God has made us to go out from ourselves, to experience the…

  36. The Serpent’s Slogans

    · 15 min · Episode 472

    Friends, we commence the holy and wonderful season of Lent, the time of preparation for Easter. I always think of Lent as something like spring training for baseball players, or like the end of the summer workouts for…

  37. Which Path Will You Choose?

    · 14 min · Episode 471

    Friends, this Sunday, right before the commencement of Lent, the Church is giving us something of great moment to reflect on—namely, the centrality of freedom and choice for the good at the center of the spiritual…

  38. Become Someone for Others

    · 15 min · Episode 470

    Friends, a great professor of mine at Mundelein Seminary, Dr. Richard Issel, once said, “If you want to be happy, stop worrying about being happy and get on with becoming fulfilled.” We find something similar in Jordan…

  39. Do You Want to Be Happy?

    · 16 min · Episode 469

    Friends, for the next several weeks, we’re going to be reading in our Gospel from the primal teaching of Jesus: the Sermon on the Mount. And we begin today with a kind of overture to it, which we call the Beatitudes.…

  40. Unity in Christ

    · 15 min · Episode 468

    Friends for this Third Sunday in Ordinary Time, our first reading from the prophet Isaiah and our Gospel from Matthew both have a section that’s a little weird. While most preachers skip over these sections to get to…

  41. The Lamb Who Takes Away the Sin of the World

    · 15 min · Episode 467

    Friends, we return now to Ordinary Time, and the Church asks us again to think about the baptism of the Lord, this time in light of Saint John’s distinctive account. John the Baptist sees Jesus coming toward him on the…

  42. Side by Side with Sinners

    · 15 min · Episode 466

    Friends, we come to this wonderful feast of the baptism of the Lord. And the first thing to know is that this was a profoundly embarrassing event for the first Christians. Jesus is the son of God, the sinless Lamb of…

  43. The Answer to Your Deepest Longing

    · 16 min · Episode 465

    Friends, why has the story of the Epiphany—the three wise man paying homage to the Christ child—so captivated us over the centuries? I think, in some ways, it tells the whole spiritual life: our infinite longing that…

  44. Protect the Life of Christ in You

    · 15 min · Episode 464

    Friends, the great feast of the Holy Family follows immediately upon Christmas—a very interesting juxtaposition with a deep theological significance. The Savior came as a little baby who required the protection of a…

  45. Are You Willing to Surrender to God?

    · 16 min · Episode 463

    Friends, our readings for the fourth and final Sunday of Advent are all about maybe the central motif of the spiritual life. Our culture today is so self-oriented: It’s all about me and my choice. But that attitude is…

  46. Waiting in Action

    · 15 min · Episode 462

    Friends, our readings for this Third Sunday of Advent help us understand what to do while we wait for the Lord. An Advent spirituality of waiting is part of Christian life; our entire life, in a way, is waiting. We…

  47. The Seven Gifts of the Holy Spirit

    · 15 min · Episode 461

    Friends, our first reading for this Second Sunday of Advent, taken from Isaiah 11, describes the Messiah’s arrival: He “shall sprout from the stump of Jesse,” and “the spirit of the LORD shall rest upon him.” The…

  48. The Season of Sacred Waiting

    · 15 min · Episode 460

    Friends, we come to the New Year celebration of the liturgical year: the First Sunday of Advent. This is the season of sacred waiting—four weeks of looking, hoping, and watching, with a kind of joyful anticipation, for…

  49. The Marks of Spiritual Leadership

    · 15 min · Episode 459

    Friends, we come to the final weekend of the liturgical year and the celebration of the Solemnity of Christ the King. Now, our country was formed in rebellion against a king, and kingship as a political reality is far…

  50. The Old World Has Been Shaken

    · 15 min · Episode 458

    Friends, we come to the Thirty-third Sunday in Ordinary Time, which means that next Sunday is the final Sunday of the liturgical year. During this time, the Church always gives us apocalyptic readings, and our Gospel…

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