Bishop Barron’s Sunday Sermons - Catholic Preaching and Homilies

Bishop Barron’s Sunday Sermons - Catholic Preaching and Homilies

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

Episodes

April 23, 2025 14 mins

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 of spring festival time, the weather getting nicer, and Easter bunnies and bonnets. All of that is great; but if you don't understand Easter as a revolution—as an earthquake that has changed the entire world—you have not understood it.

Mark as Played

Friends, happy Easter! Many of you probably know that I’ve spent much of my life reading philosophers and spiritual writers—Plato, Aristotle, Confucius, Cicero, Marcus Aurelius, Anselm, Aquinas, Kant, Hegel. What all those figures have in common is a kind of calm, musing detachment as they talk about high ideas. Well, there’s all of that—and then there’s the Gospel, the “Good News.” Yes, the Gospels have inspired philosophers and s...

Mark as Played
April 10, 2025 15 mins

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 Gospels. This year, we hear from Saint Luke, and I want to look at two elements unique to his particular version, both of which have to do with forgiveness.

Mark as Played
April 2, 2025 15 mins

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 passage of both literary genius and spiritual power, one that uses the language of conversion—of letting go of the way I understood and defined my life and turning toward an entirely new way.

Mark as Played
March 26, 2025 15 mins

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 Letter to the Corinthians, and the Gospel reading, which is the magnificent parable of the prodigal son from Luke. The correspondences between these three readings I think are quite striking, and they have to do with the Eucharist and divinization.

Mark as Played
March 18, 2025 14 mins

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 the book of Exodus, of Moses’s encounter with the burning bush. It’s one of the pivotal texts in all of Scripture; so much of our great tradition refers to and flows from it, and it sheds light in every direction, telling us profound truths about God, about the spiritual life, and abo...

Mark as Played
March 11, 2025 15 mins

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 and confounding; there is sort of an aching and a longing associated with this text. It speaks to us of these moments when reality becomes incandescent or transparent to something more—something that lies beyond our ordinary experience.

Mark as Played

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 come to terms with the big questions: God, meaning, purpose, eternal life. The Gospel for this week, Luke’s marvelous account of the temptation of Jesus, invites us to wrestle with three questions in particular.

Mark as Played
February 25, 2025 15 mins

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 the Resurrection of Jesus from the dead. It was the Resurrection that Paul correctly took as the hinge, the central teaching, of Christianity. But what do we mean by “Resurrection”? How do we theologize about it?

Mark as Played
February 19, 2025 14 mins

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 something about the moral life; it’s also saying something very profound about God. It has to do with what a number of philosophers in the twentieth century called the aporia—the difficulty or even impossibility—of the gift. Can we give a gift that’s truly a gift, with no strings attached...

Mark as Played
February 12, 2025 15 mins

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 Sermon on the Plain. And both readings draw out a basic feature of biblical spirituality—namely, the ordering of the heart, that deepest organizing principle of one’s entire life, to the Lord. 

Mark as Played
February 4, 2025 14 mins

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 Isaiah and the Gospel from the fifth chapter of Luke. They both speak to what I think are three key moments in the Christian spiritual life: first, the breakthrough of grace; then, the acknowledgement of sin; and finally, being sent on mission.

Mark as Played
January 29, 2025 14 mins

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 this way, a hard truth. And the clue is given to us in the first reading, which is from the prophet Malachi: “And suddenly there will come to the temple the LORD whom you seek.”

Mark as Played
January 22, 2025 14 mins

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-sided about walls and bridges: walls are bad and keep people out, while bridges are great and establish connection. But you need both walls and bridges—both identity and relevance, both the Word and the Word proclaimed—to live the Christian thing correctly.

Mark as Played
January 14, 2025 14 mins

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 though, as we commence the ordinary liturgical year, we're meant to see everything through the lens of this reading. The Church sets it up with our first reading from the prophet Isaiah, who speaks of God’s desire to marry his people. Jesus, in his own person, is the marriage of divinit...

Mark as Played
January 7, 2025 13 mins

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 have to go through to understand Jesus properly. What was John the Baptist doing in the desert? Why did the Messiah, the Lord, go to him for a baptism of repentance? And why do we still spend time with this strange, puzzling, and even embarrassing event?

Mark as Played
December 30, 2024 14 mins

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 romantic and charming about it. But on this great Feast of the Epiphany, I want to develop an important angle of the story very much on the minds of many people today—namely, the whole problem of religion and science.

Mark as Played
December 18, 2024 14 mins

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 associated with family values, and indeed it is, but they're probably not the ones we would automatically think of. We see this in the two stories that the Church brings to our attention today: the story of Hannah leaving Samuel at the temple in Shiloh, and the story of Mary and Joseph f...

Mark as Played
December 18, 2024 15 mins

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 do in this homily is to look at some of the Church’s classical titles of Mary. These are not simply pious exclamations, but rather very substantive insights into her role in bringing Christ to birth—both in history and in us today.

Mark as Played
December 10, 2024 15 mins

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 Philippians. These lines about joy, anxiety, prayer, and peace can run right through our minds, but they’re actually breathtaking, and they open up something at the very heart of the spiritual life.

Mark as Played

Popular Podcasts

    Daniel Jeremiah of Move the Sticks and Gregg Rosenthal of NFL Daily join forces to break down every team's needs this offseason.

    Dateline NBC

    Current and classic episodes, featuring compelling true-crime mysteries, powerful documentaries and in-depth investigations. Follow now to get the latest episodes of Dateline NBC completely free, or subscribe to Dateline Premium for ad-free listening and exclusive bonus content: DatelinePremium.com

    The Bobby Bones Show

    Listen to 'The Bobby Bones Show' by downloading the daily full replay.

    Las Culturistas with Matt Rogers and Bowen Yang

    Ding dong! Join your culture consultants, Matt Rogers and Bowen Yang, on an unforgettable journey into the beating heart of CULTURE. Alongside sizzling special guests, they GET INTO the hottest pop-culture moments of the day and the formative cultural experiences that turned them into Culturistas. Produced by the Big Money Players Network and iHeartRadio.

    The Clay Travis and Buck Sexton Show

    The Clay Travis and Buck Sexton Show. Clay Travis and Buck Sexton tackle the biggest stories in news, politics and current events with intelligence and humor. From the border crisis, to the madness of cancel culture and far-left missteps, Clay and Buck guide listeners through the latest headlines and hot topics with fun and entertaining conversations and opinions.

Advertise With Us
Music, radio and podcasts, all free. Listen online or download the iHeart App.

Connect

© 2025 iHeartMedia, Inc.