Bishop Barron’s Sunday Sermons - Catholic Preaching and Homilies

Waiting in Action

10 Dec 2025

Contributed by Lukas

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 p...

The Seven Gifts of the Holy Spirit

02 Dec 2025

Contributed by Lukas

Friends, our first reading for this Second Sunday of Advent, taken from Isaiah 11, describes the Messiah’s arrival: He “shall sprout from the stum...

The Season of Sacred Waiting

25 Nov 2025

Contributed by Lukas

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 ...

The Marks of Spiritual Leadership

19 Nov 2025

Contributed by Lukas

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 r...

The Old World Has Been Shaken

11 Nov 2025

Contributed by Lukas

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 tim...

The Place of Right Praise

05 Nov 2025

Contributed by Lukas

Friends, this Sunday we’re celebrating, with the whole Church, the dedication of the great cathedral of Rome: the Lateran Basilica. You could argue ...

Why We Pray for All Souls

30 Oct 2025

Contributed by Lukas

Friends, All Souls Day, November 2, falls on a Sunday this year, so we can really spend some time reflecting on this wonderful feast, which means so ...

Are You Revolving Around God—Or God Around You?

21 Oct 2025

Contributed by Lukas

Friends, for this Thirtieth Sunday of Ordinary Time, we are treated to the wonderful and deeply challenging parable of the Pharisee and the publican ...

The Power of Prayer

14 Oct 2025

Contributed by Lukas

Friends, when something tragic happens and people offer their prayers, you’ll often hear now, “I've had it with thoughts and prayers. We have to a...

The Gospel Is Jesus Christ

07 Oct 2025

Contributed by Lukas

Friends, in our second reading this Sunday, Paul writes to Timothy, “Remember Jesus Christ, raised from the dead, a descendant of David: such is my...

Trust in God’s Plan

29 Sep 2025

Contributed by Lukas

Friends, this Sunday, I want to talk to you once again about faith. As I’ve said before, faith is the most misunderstood word in the religious vocab...

Love for the Poor

24 Sep 2025

Contributed by Lukas

Friends, Pope Benedict XVI memorably told us that the Church does three essential things: It worships God, it evangelizes, and it serves the poor. T...

The Use—and Abuse—of Power

16 Sep 2025

Contributed by Lukas

Friends, for this Twenty-fifth Sunday of Ordinary Time, I want to focus on the first and second readings. When read together, they give us a very goo...

Christ, and Him Crucified

10 Sep 2025

Contributed by Lukas

Friends, this year, the Feast of the Exaltation of the Holy Cross falls on a Sunday, so we have the great privilege of reflecting a bit more deeply on...

Are You Ready for Serious Discipleship?

02 Sep 2025

Contributed by Lukas

Friends, for this Twenty-Third Sunday of Ordinary Time, we’re reading from the fourteenth chapter of Luke—and it is very serious spiritual busines...

Don’t Play the Pride Game

27 Aug 2025

Contributed by Lukas

Friends, for this Twenty-second Sunday of Ordinary Time, I want to talk to you about a very important theme—namely, pride and its antidote. I don’...

Does God Punish Us?

20 Aug 2025

Contributed by Lukas

Friends, I want to focus this week on the second reading, which is from the marvelous Letter to the Hebrews. It addresses a very important and very co...

Christ Came to Cast Fire Upon the Earth

14 Aug 2025

Contributed by Lukas

Friends, the title of my ministry, Word on Fire, came from our Gospel for today. Jesus says to his disciples, “I have come to set the earth on fire,...

What Is Faith?

05 Aug 2025

Contributed by Lukas

Friends, on this Nineteenth Sunday of Ordinary Time, our second reading from the Letter to the Hebrews offers us a great biblical description of faith...

All Things Must Pass

29 Jul 2025

Contributed by Lukas

Friends, George Harrison once sang, “All things must pass; all things must pass away.” Almost every major religious figure and philosopher the wor...

Lord, Teach Us to Pray

23 Jul 2025

Contributed by Lukas

Friends, we have the great privilege this week of reading, in our Gospel, Luke’s account of the Lord’s Prayer. This is a very sacred moment: J...

Are You Anxious and Worried About Many Things?

15 Jul 2025

Contributed by Lukas

Friends, on this Sixteenth Sunday of Ordinary Time, our Gospel is the Martha and Mary story, and in my years of preaching, I’ve found that it ten...

The Natural Law

08 Jul 2025

Contributed by Lukas

Friends, in our first reading from the book of Deuteronomy this week, Moses says to the people, “For this command that I enjoin on you today is not ...

The Church’s Marching Orders

01 Jul 2025

Contributed by Lukas

Friends, as we resume Ordinary Time, it’s appropriate that we’re looking at a portrait of the Church, because we’re coming back, if you want, to...

The Church Is Built on the Rock

23 Jun 2025

Contributed by Lukas

Friends, this year, the feast of Saints Peter and Paul falls on a Sunday, and I want to spend some time reflecting especially on Saint Peter. Around ...

Join Your Life to Christ’s Sacrifice

17 Jun 2025

Contributed by Lukas

Friends, every year we have Trinity Sunday followed by today’s wonderful Solemnity of Corpus Christi—two of the highest theological mysteries of o...

The Theology of the Trinity

10 Jun 2025

Contributed by Lukas

Friends, today is Trinity Sunday—one of my favorite feast days of the year because I can put my old theologian’s cap on. Looking first at one of t...

The Fruit of the Spirit

05 Jun 2025

Contributed by Lukas

Friends, this is the great feast of Pentecost, the feast of the Holy Spirit. In the First Reading, the Spirit manifests himself as a strong driving wi...

Seated at the Right Hand of the Father

28 May 2025

Contributed by Lukas

Friends, getting the Ascension of the Lord right is very important for understanding many aspects of the Church’s life. So I want to dwell on that a...

The Holy Spirit Will Teach You Everything

21 May 2025

Contributed by Lukas

Friends, we come to the Sixth Sunday of Easter, and as the Church readies us for Pentecost, the readings begin to talk about the Holy Spirit. In today...

The Love That Jesus Commands

15 May 2025

Contributed by Lukas

Friends on this Fifth Sunday of Easter, we have an extraordinary Gospel that is at the heart of the Christian thing. Jesus, at the beginning of a leng...

The Voice in the Depths of Your Soul

08 May 2025

Contributed by Lukas

Friends, on this Fourth Sunday of Easter, we have this marvelous, short but very punchy reading from the Gospel of John: Jesus referring to himself as...

Becoming a Disciple of Jesus

01 May 2025

Contributed by Lukas

Friends, on this Third Sunday of Easter, we have the magnificent Gospel from the very end of the Gospel of John, chapter twenty-one, which is so rich...

Everything Has Changed

23 Apr 2025

Contributed by Lukas

Friends, we enter now into the Easter season, and here is the thing I want you to know: We misunderstand Easter dramatically when we think primarily o...

Something Happened on Easter!

15 Apr 2025

Contributed by Lukas

Friends, happy Easter! Many of you probably know that I’ve spent much of my life reading philosophers and spiritual writers—Plato, Aristotle, Conf...

The Forgiveness of Sinners

10 Apr 2025

Contributed by Lukas

Friends, we come to Palm Sunday, which is also called Passion Sunday because we always read at Mass the Passion narrative from one of the synoptic Gos...

The Conversion of Saint Paul

02 Apr 2025

Contributed by Lukas

Friends, we come to the Fifth Sunday of Lent, and I want to reflect today on our second reading from the Letter of Paul to the Philippians. It is a...

The Heavenly Banquet

26 Mar 2025

Contributed by Lukas

Friends, this Fourth Sunday of Lent gives us marvelous readings: the First Reading from the book of Joshua, the Second Reading from Paul’s Second Le...

You Can’t Grasp—or Hide From—God

18 Mar 2025

Contributed by Lukas

Friends, we come to the Third Sunday of Lent, and we have the extraordinary privilege during Cycle C of reading this account, in the third chapter of ...

When the Eternal Breaks Through

11 Mar 2025

Contributed by Lukas

Friends our Gospel for the Second Sunday of Lent this year is Luke’s account of the Transfiguration. And it opens up something that is marvelous an...

Three Questions to Ask Yourself During Lent

05 Mar 2025

Contributed by Lukas

Friends, we come to the holy season of Lent. Pascal said that most of us go through life diverting and distracting ourselves so that we don’t com...

The Revolution of the Resurrection

25 Feb 2025

Contributed by Lukas

Friends, for this Eighth Sunday in Ordinary Time, the Church gives us the opportunity, in our second reading from 1 Corinthians 15, to reflect on th...

Give Expecting Nothing Back

19 Feb 2025

Contributed by Lukas

Friends, our Gospel for today is from the Sermon on the Plain, which is Luke's version of Matthew's Sermon on the Mount, and it’s not only saying ...

Place Your Heart in God

12 Feb 2025

Contributed by Lukas

Friends, on this Sixth Sunday in Ordinary Time, we have the first reading from the prophet Jeremiah in tandem with the Gospel from Luke’s Serm...

Graced Sinners on Mission

04 Feb 2025

Contributed by Lukas

Friends, for the Fifth Sunday in Ordinary Time, the Church gives us a wonderful pairing of readings: the first reading from the sixth chapter of Isai...

God Returns to His Temple

29 Jan 2025

Contributed by Lukas

Friends, it’s easy enough to sentimentalize the Feast of the Presentation. But we oughtn’t to, because this story is getting at, if I can put it t...

You Can’t Give What You Don’t Have

22 Jan 2025

Contributed by Lukas

Friends, on this Third Sunday of Ordinary Time, I want to talk to you about walls and bridges. There is a tendency today to be simplistic and one-sid...

The Marriage of Divinity and Humanity

14 Jan 2025

Contributed by Lukas

Friends, we return now to Ordinary Time, and this Sunday, we hear the marvelous story of the wedding feast at Cana from the Gospel of John. It's as th...

Why Was Jesus Baptized?

07 Jan 2025

Contributed by Lukas

Friends, the Feast of the Baptism of the Lord is exceptionally important. All four Gospels talk about it, and John the Baptist is a kind of door we ...

Science Points to God

30 Dec 2024

Contributed by Lukas

Friends, we’re all familiar with the story of the three wise men, which has been depicted in thousands of Christmas cards. And there is something ro...

Freeing Your Family for God

18 Dec 2024

Contributed by Lukas

Friends, I always love preaching on the Feast of the Holy Family because I think the biblical message here is very surprising. We say the Bible is ass...

Why Mary Matters

18 Dec 2024

Contributed by Lukas

Friends, on this Fourth Sunday of Advent, we come to the Advent figure par excellence: the Blessed Virgin Mary, the Mother of God. What I want to d...

The Peace that the World Can’t Give

10 Dec 2024

Contributed by Lukas

Friends, on this Third Sunday of Advent, called Gaudete Sunday, I want to draw attention to our second reading, which is from St. Paul to the Phili...

Have You Wandered Away from God?

03 Dec 2024

Contributed by Lukas

Friends, in our readings for the Second Sunday of Advent, there is a lot of talk about building highways. In the Bible, both Old Testament and New...

Three Dimensions of Advent

26 Nov 2024

Contributed by Lukas

Friends, we come to the First Sunday of Advent, which is the commencement of the new liturgical year. “Adventus” in Latin means arrival or comin...

Which Kingdom Are You In?

20 Nov 2024

Contributed by Lukas

Friends, we come to the end of the liturgical year with the Feast of Christ the King, where we meditate upon the kingly reign or rule of Christ. Now, ...

A New World Unveiled

12 Nov 2024

Contributed by Lukas

Friends, we're coming toward the end of the liturgical year, and as is typical, the Church gives us readings of an apocalyptic nature dealing with t...

Trusting God in Dire Straits

05 Nov 2024

Contributed by Lukas

Friends, our first reading is that wonderful story of Elijah and the widow of Zarephath, which is a kind of hidden gem in the Old Testament. Like so m...

The Highest Good Is God Alone

29 Oct 2024

Contributed by Lukas

Friends, the readings for this Thirty-first Sunday in Ordinary Time take us to very holy ground. In the first reading, taken from the sixth chapter of...

Answering God’s Call

23 Oct 2024

Contributed by Lukas

Friends, all three readings for this Thirtieth Sunday of Ordinary Time have a golden thread running through them, which is the idea of the call—...

What Real Power Looks Like

15 Oct 2024

Contributed by Lukas

Friends, our Gospel this Sunday is taken from the tenth chapter of Mark, and it is high-octane spiritual business. Something pivotal is being laid ...

What Do You Ask God For?

07 Oct 2024

Contributed by Lukas

Friends, for this Twenty-eighth Sunday of Ordinary Time, our first reading from the marvelous book of Wisdom presents an old biblical trope: If you ...

The Biblical Vision of the Family

01 Oct 2024

Contributed by Lukas

Friends, the first reading from Genesis and the Gospel from Mark this week are of great importance. They have to do with what we call Christian anth...

Whoever Is Not Against Us Is For Us

25 Sep 2024

Contributed by Lukas

Friends, the first reading and Gospel this Sunday have to do with the Church at war with itself. The devil is the scatterer, the divider, and one of h...

The Ladder Doesn’t Matter

17 Sep 2024

Contributed by Lukas

Friends, why was the story of Jesus with the little children, versions of which appear in the three synoptic Gospels, so vividly remembered by the fir...

Faith Without Works Is Dead

10 Sep 2024

Contributed by Lukas

Friends, “fools rush in where angels fear to tread”—and this week, I am going to go once more into the issue of faith and works, which has been ...

Be Opened!

03 Sep 2024

Contributed by Lukas

Friends, our Gospel for today is the evocative scene of Jesus healing a man who cannot hear and cannot speak. This man is beautifully symbolic of m...

The Goodness—and Dangers—of the Law

27 Aug 2024

Contributed by Lukas

Friends, as Americans, we have a very ambiguous relationship to law. On the one hand, we are a nation of independently minded people; we don’t lik...

Do You Accept This Teaching?

20 Aug 2024

Contributed by Lukas

Friends, we come now to the close of this great discourse of Jesus in the sixth chapter of John, where we see the aftereffects of his teaching on the...

Really, Truly, and Substantially Present

13 Aug 2024

Contributed by Lukas

Friends, we continue reading from the sixth chapter of John, this pivotal section of the New Testament where John lays out his Eucharistic theology. A...

Strength for the Journey

06 Aug 2024

Contributed by Lukas

Friends, we’re continuing our reading of the sixth chapter of the Gospel of John, which is all about the Eucharist. And here’s my take on our read...

Everything in This World Passes Away

30 Jul 2024

Contributed by Lukas

Friends, in the midst of our country’s great Eucharistic Revival, we continue our reading of the sixth chapter of the Gospel of John. And this week,...

Where Heaven and Earth Meet

24 Jul 2024

Contributed by Lukas

Friends, this Sunday we begin five weeks of Gospel readings from the sixth chapter of John, which is all about the Eucharist. Jesus will get into a l...

The Shepherd Has Arrived

16 Jul 2024

Contributed by Lukas

Friends the readings for this Sixteenth Sunday in Ordinary Time are interwoven with each other in a very interesting way. I want to start with the f...

The Earliest Moments of the Church

09 Jul 2024

Contributed by Lukas

Friends, on this Fifteenth Sunday in Ordinary Time, our Gospel from the sixth chapter of Mark is Jesus sending the Twelve out on mission. These are th...

A Thorn in the Flesh

03 Jul 2024

Contributed by Lukas

Friends, on this Fourteenth Sunday of Ordinary Time, our second reading is from Paul’s Second Letter to the Corinthians. The focus of the reading is...

Reach Out in Faith

25 Jun 2024

Contributed by Lukas

Friends, there’s something Hemingway-esque about Mark’s Gospel—something very direct and uncomplicated. But in another sense, he shows great lit...

Peace in the Storm

17 Jun 2024

Contributed by Lukas

Friends, our Gospel for today is Mark’s account of the stilling of the sea. We know the basic structure of the story: Jesus is in the boat with the ...

See Things Differently

11 Jun 2024

Contributed by Lukas

Friends, people of faith just see things differently. They see what the nonbeliever sees—they read history and watch the news and see what’s going...

What Is Sin?

04 Jun 2024

Contributed by Lukas

Friends, we return now to Ordinary Time, and this Sunday, the Church gives us such a fundamentally important reading from the third chapter of the boo...

The Power of Eucharistic Adoration

28 May 2024

Contributed by Lukas

Friends, we come to the great Feast of Corpus Christi—the Body and Blood of Christ. This year, as the Church in the US is going through a lengthy Eu...

Three Ways of Approaching the Trinity

22 May 2024

Contributed by Lukas

Friends, we come once again to Trinity Sunday. The Church has reflected very deeply on who God is, and this great doctrine of the Trinity has emerged ...

Fruits of the Spirit, Works of the Flesh

14 May 2024

Contributed by Lukas

Friends, we come to the Feast of Pentecost, the great celebration of the Holy Spirit. I want to focus on our second reading from the fifth chapter of ...

Get to Work!

07 May 2024

Contributed by Lukas

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, “...

Hints of the Holy Spirit

30 Apr 2024

Contributed by Lukas

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 u...

It’s Time for Some Pruning

23 Apr 2024

Contributed by Lukas

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 ...

Three Qualities of a Good Shepherd

16 Apr 2024

Contributed by Lukas

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 l...

What Happens After We Die?

09 Apr 2024

Contributed by Lukas

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 t...

Do You Struggle to Believe?

02 Apr 2024

Contributed by Lukas

Friends, on the Second Sunday of Easter, we have the inexhaustible reading from the twentieth chapter of John—one of the accounts of the Resurrectio...

Evidence of the Resurrection

26 Mar 2024

Contributed by Lukas

Friends, a very happy and blessed Easter! We come to the climax of the Church’s year, the feast of feasts, the very reason for being of Christianity...

Put Yourself in the Passion Narrative

19 Mar 2024

Contributed by Lukas

Friends, we have the great privilege on Palm Sunday of reading from one of the Passion narratives, and this year, we read from the Gospel of Mark—th...

Drinking the Blood of Christ

12 Mar 2024

Contributed by Lukas

Friends, on this Fifth Sunday of Lent, we hear one of the most pivotal passages in the Old Testament: Jeremiah 31:31. Jeremiah knew the long Israelite...

Face Your Fears

05 Mar 2024

Contributed by Lukas

Friends, the Gospel on this Fourth Sunday of Lent includes one of the most famous verses in the Bible: “For God so loved the world that he gave his ...

A Tour of the Ten Commandments

27 Feb 2024

Contributed by Lukas

Friends, on this Third Sunday of Lent, the Church asks us to look at one of the great texts in the Old Testament—namely, the Ten Commandments from t...

When Your Faith Is Put to the Test

20 Feb 2024

Contributed by Lukas

Friends, we come now to the Second Sunday of Lent, and we’re on both dangerous and very holy ground with the first reading from the twenty-second ch...

Are Your Soul and Body at War?

13 Feb 2024

Contributed by Lukas

Friends, we come now to the holy season of Lent. The Gospel for this First Sunday of Lent is Mark’s laconic version of the temptation of Jesus in th...

Reaching Out to the Lepers

06 Feb 2024

Contributed by Lukas

Friends, this week, our Gospel is the marvelous passage from Mark about Jesus curing a leper. These moments of healing stayed so deeply in the imagina...

Pray, Serve, Evangelize

30 Jan 2024

Contributed by Lukas

Friends, the Gospel of Mark is a fascinating literary work. St. Mark seems to write in a breathless, staccato, even primitive manner, but the deeper y...

Surrender to the Holy One

22 Jan 2024

Contributed by Lukas

Friends, the first reading from Deuteronomy today is of signal importance. Moses, speaking to the people before they enter the Promised Land, says, “...

Listen to the Voice of God!

16 Jan 2024

Contributed by Lukas

Friends, though the book of Jonah is only a few pages long, there is something inexhaustible about it. It’s a biblical commonplace that God speaks t...