Bishop Barron’s Sunday Sermons - Catholic Preaching and Homilies

St. James reminds us that an essential element of the Christian life is waiting. As the farmer waits for the precious yield of the earth, so the believer waits while Christ does his mysterious work in the world. Thus we must learn the virtue of patient expectation.

As we commence a new liturgical year, the Church invites us to survey the world from the standpoint of Isaiah's holy mountain, the height to which all the nations stream. This is a beautiful image of ""communio,"" of the many gathered around the one, and it is reflective of the fundamental ""communio"" which is the Trinity, three persons constituting the one God. When we look at things from this perspective, we see them aright.

As we commence a new liturgical year, the Church invites us to survey the world from the standpoint of Isaiah's holy mountain, the height to which all the nations stream. This is a beautiful image of ""communio,"" of the many gathered around the one, and it is reflective of the fundamental ""communio"" which is the Trinity, three persons constituting the one God. When we look at things from this perspective, we see them aright.

John the Baptist is, along with Isaiah and the Virgin Mary, the great figure of Advent. We hear his voice in the desert, summoning us to repentance and readiness. When we have purified our minds and hearts, we are able to receive the one who will baptize us with the Holy Spirit, the fire of God's very life.

Christ is indeed King, but an odd one. For he reigns, not from a throne, but from a cross, and he is crowned, not with laurel leaves, but with a ring of thorns. What this feast teaches us is the meaning of true power. The power that creates the cosmos is not domination, but rather self-forgetting and self-sacrificing love.

Christians believe that the end of the world has occurred in the death and resurrection of Jesus. This means that the old world dominated by sin, suffering, and death has been undermined. Now we live in the "in-between-times," waiting for the definitive arrival of the new world which Jesus has inaugurated.

The Christian attitude toward the body lies beyond the extremes of hedonism (taking the body too seriously) and puritanism (taking it not seriously enough). Christians are "eschatologically detached" from their bodies here below, precisely because they expect transfigured bodies in the age to come. We can see this Biblical attitude on display in both the Old Testament and the Gospels.

Irish writer Iris Murdoch says that the rarest and best moments in life occur when the web of our egotism and self-absorption is broken through. This can happen through great art and great compassion. It can also happen through authentic prayer, modelled by the publican in Jesus' famous parable.

The Old Testament story of the battle between Israel and the Amalekites is a symbolic presentation of the church. In the struggle against evil, there are fighters, pray-ers, and those who support the pray-ers. The Church is an amalgam of interdependent and mutually supporting missions.

For Jesus, faith is power. When we have linked ourselves to the God who fashions and governs the cosmos, we allow enormous power to flow through us for the transformation of the world. To have faith is to live in the "great soul." It is to expand the horizons of our consciousness and activity infinitely.