Friends, Happy New Year's Day! We come today to the beginning of a liturgical year—the first Sunday of Advent. There is a sort of a permanent Advent quality, a vigil quality, to the Christian life. We are waiting, watching; we want something we don't fully have. And as we prepare for the coming of the Lord, our Adventchallenge is this: What is our “highest mountain”? Where do we offer worship? If it is not the mountain of the Lord—if we have fallen into a spiritual sleep—now is the time to wake up and stay awake, to get our lives in order, to stop making excuses.

An Advent Challenge

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

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Friends, today we come to the wonderful Feast of the Ascension of the Lord. Like the disciples in our first reading, we often want to ask the Lord, “When is all of this going to come to fruition? What’s it all about? When is all of this going to make sense?” Reasonable enough questions. And we hear the same answer: It’s not for you to worry about. Rather, get to work! In the Ascension, the Lord moves to a higher dimension and then sends the Holy Spirit at Pentecost, so that we can be empowered to do Christ’s work in the world.

Get to Work!

Friends, we’re getting very close to Pentecost, the great feast of the descent of the Spirit. And on this Sixth Sunday of Easter, the Church gives us three readings that are hinting at the Holy Spirit—a kind of foretaste of that descent.

Hints of the Holy Spirit

Friends, the Lord Jesus Christ is not a teacher from a distant age, not someone from long ago we remember fondly, not a moral exemplar; rather, he is a field of force. We don’t just listen to him or imitate him; we live in him. Our Gospel for this Fifth Sunday of Easter gives us one of the most beautiful and powerful images for this truth: Jesus is the vine, and we are the branches. But there is a dark side to this wonderful organic imagery: the Father is the vine grower, and he is going to prune away all that is in us that is preventing the life of Christ from manifesting itself.

It’s Time for Some Pruning

Friends, we come to the Fourth Sunday of Easter, known as Good Shepherd Sunday. Jesus says in the Gospel, “I am the good shepherd. A good shepherd lays down his life for the sheep.” What is it about that image that sings to us across the ages, from the pages of the Bible to the present day? What I want to do is reflect on this image of the shepherd—first, in relation to Jesus, then second, in relation to leadership in the life of the Church.

Three Qualities of a Good Shepherd

Friends, this week, on the Third Sunday of Easter, we have a passage from that magnificent twenty-fourth chapter of Luke—one of the appearances of the risen Christ to the Apostles. When we’re talking about the Resurrection, we’re talking about the central point of Christian faith, the hinge upon which the whole of Christianity turns. So to understand what we’re dealing with here is exceptionally important. What I want to do is reflect on the different views about what happens to us when we die that were floating around the eastern Mediterranean in the first century—and how none of them is on offer here.

An Advent Challenge

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