~ cueing up the show ~
~ pulling every episode ~
Bishop Barron’s Sunday Sermons - Catholic Preaching and Homilies — Every episode — OmList
om
list
Swipe
Tournament
Lists
Friends
All
Movies
TV
Books
Games
Music
Podcasts
People
▾
Sign in
Every episode
Bishop Barron’s Sunday Sermons - Catholic Preaching and Homilies
30 episodes
How Not to Read the Story of the Syrophoenician Woman
Ep 497 · Aug 11, 2026 · 16 min
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 offers one of the most famous comebacks in literary history. A common reading of this story is that Jesus is cranky from a tough day of ministry, and a plucky woman from Syrophoenicia straightens him out. But this turns Jesus into a sinner—and the whole structure of Christianity f…
A Tiny Whispering Voice
Ep 496 · Aug 6, 2026 · 15 min
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 understand it? How about objective values and our ability to recognize them? Our first reading from 1 Kings reflects, I think, a great breakthrough in Western consciousness about how we’re able to identify right and wrong—just as we’re able to identify patterns in the physical world.
The Heart of Christianity
Ep 495 · Jul 29, 2026 · 15 min
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 making, and the reading for today is the rhetorical high point of that conclusion. This is the first great theologian of the Church naming what is essential to Christianity—so we have to pay attention!
What Life Is All About
Ep 494 · Jul 23, 2026 · 15 min
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 matter and convey the truth of the kingdom, and the two we hear today—the parable of the hidden treasure and the parable of the pearl—are really good examples. Both are about the summum bonum, the highest good, and therefore about what’s most fundamental in the spiritual life. Inde…
All Things Work Together for Good
Ep 493 · Jul 15, 2026 · 16 min
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 the wheat and the weeds. A man sows good seed on his field, and while he’s asleep, an enemy sows weeds among the wheat. But the man resists the impulse to pull them up, as it might uproot the wheat too: “Let them grow together until harvest.” This parable is getting at something ver…
Let the Word of God Take Root in You
Ep 492 · Jul 8, 2026 · 15 min
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 the kingdom of God. The first of these, which we’re reading from today, is the parable of the sower. What do we hear? That it’s never a question of God being reticent or holding back his grace. The problem comes from our side: We block the Word of God, setting up obstacles to it t…
Your King Shall Come to You
Ep 491 · Jul 1, 2026 · 15 min
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 donkey—a king who will “proclaim peace to the nations” and extend his dominion “to the ends of the earth.” This strange text from the ancient world has been fulfilled in our hearing and in our sight.
Be Attached to God Alone
Ep 490 · Jun 23, 2026 · 15 min
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 his apostles, “and whoever loves son or daughter more than me is not worthy of me.” There are points of overlap with Jesus’s teachings in all the great religions of the world—but there’s nothing like this.
Fear No One
Ep 489 · Jun 18, 2026 · 15 min
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 readings from the tenth chapter of Matthew. As Jesus sends his disciples on mission, he gives them, and us, a wonderful instruction in the spiritual life. What we hear, as I say, is astonishing—and if you allow it to sink in, it will change your life.
Jesus Sees Something in You
Ep 488 · Jun 10, 2026 · 15 min
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 does Jesus call to be his apostles? Not the best and brightest people of his time but fairly ordinary and even compromised characters. Yet Jesus sees something in every one of them—some gift, virtue, or capacity needed in the life of the Church.
From the Exodus to the Eucharist
Ep 487 · Jun 3, 2026 · 15 min
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 bread from heaven described in the book of Exodus. This is then correlated to the Eucharist, the bread from heaven that Jesus gives us, in our Gospel from the sixth chapter of John. I want to explore four dimensions of this relationship between manna and the Eucharist.
The Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit
Ep 486 · May 27, 2026 · 15 min
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 pray: Whenever we make the sign of the cross, we’re invoking the Trinity. It matters that we come to understand this doctrine more plainly, so that we might understand the meaning of our redemption.
Tongues of Fire
Ep 485 · May 20, 2026 · 16 min
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 also the birthday of the Church—and we are meant to see ourselves in the readings for today.
What Is the Spirit Calling You to Do?
Ep 484 · May 13, 2026 · 15 min
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 longer have experiences like the disciples had of the risen Lord, we experience him through his Holy Spirit, who equips us to continue Christ’s work in the world.
Five Signs of the Holy Spirit
Ep 483 · May 7, 2026 · 14 min
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 the most important of the Church year. And in our three readings for today, we see five signs—in the Church broadly speaking and in your own life—that the Spirit is present and moving.
The Dwelling Place of God
Ep 482 · Apr 28, 2026 · 15 min
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 importance of the Jerusalem temple for ancient Israelites. It was the focal point of Jewish life—the political, cultural, and of course religious center of the country. It was seen, in almost a literal sense, as the dwelling place of God on earth.
Cut to the Heart
Ep 481 · Apr 22, 2026 · 15 min
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 the essence of authentic Christian preaching. Peter, filled with the excitement of the Gospel, names the problem of sin, declares Jesus as Lord and Christ, and cuts his listeners to the heart. Then there comes naturally a question in response: “What are we to do?”
The Pattern and Presence of Jesus
Ep 480 · Apr 14, 2026 · 15 min
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 something that happened long ago; it's also about the Church now, and in all times. And it tells us who Jesus is and how to recognize him.
Both His Wounds and His Peace
Ep 479 · Apr 8, 2026 · 15 min
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 exceptionally important juxtaposition here: He also shows them his wounds, a sign of humanity’s own sin and dysfunction. It’s not one or the other, his peace or his wounds; it’s both. To get this wrong is to get a lot of Christianity wrong.
The Earthquake of the Resurrection
Ep 478 · Mar 30, 2026 · 15 min
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 hinge point, the standing or falling point, of our faith. Taking Easter seriously is the source of our joy and our hope. Everything else is secondary to the great declaration of our Easter faith. In light of that, I want to talk to you today about earthquakes.
God Enters Into Our Darkness
Ep 477 · Mar 24, 2026 · 16 min
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 distinctive qualities of Matthew’s account is his stress on Judas—and more precisely, on the deep regret that Judas felt over his betrayal of the Lord. We’re challenged here to contemplate the radicality of God’s mercy and his relentless pursuit of even the worst of sinners.
Jesus Wept
Ep 476 · Mar 16, 2026 · 16 min
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 miracles of Jesus in John’s Gospel are referred to as “semeia” in Greek—“signs.” They’re indicators of God’s power and manner that teach us great truths about our spiritual lives. And the raising of Lazarus teaches us about the ways of God amid our suffering. Why do these things happen…
The Light of the World
Ep 475 · Mar 10, 2026 · 16 min
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 into a world that has been infected by cruelty and violence and hatred. Original sin blinds us; it takes us out of the light. But Christ declares himself “the light of the world”—the one who will heal and illumine the eyes of us all.
Thirsting for God
Ep 474 · Mar 3, 2026 · 15 min
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 to find bread; it’s about telling people dying of thirst where to find water. Every one of us sinners seeks life in this way; thus, this story, so rich in its dynamics, is a story about all of us.
The Adventure of Salvation
Ep 473 · Feb 26, 2026 · 15 min
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 splendor of reality. The more we let go of ourselves and our prerogatives—and the less we try to grasp and hang on to things—the more alive we become. Salvation, therefore, has a lot to do with adventure.
The Serpent’s Slogans
Ep 472 · Feb 17, 2026 · 15 min
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 football players. It’s a time to get back to spiritual basics, to reacquaint ourselves with the elemental things in the spiritual life that we might get ourselves ordered to Christ. So the Church, in our first reading from Genesis, brings us back to the beginning.
Which Path Will You Choose?
Ep 471 · Feb 11, 2026 · 14 min
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 life. As Thomas More puts it in A Man for All Seasons, “God made animals for innocence and plants for their simplicity. But Man He made to serve Him wittily, in the tangle of his mind.” God wants us to give him glory in a particular way: through our intellect and will—our search for tr…
Become Someone for Others
Ep 470 · Feb 6, 2026 · 15 min
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 Peterson’s observation that “self-consciousness is equivalent to misery.” In short, we’re most unhappy when we’re turned inward, fussing about ourselves. If you want to be psychologically healthy, forget about yourself and move out toward others. I always think of this when I come…
Do You Want to Be Happy?
Ep 469 · Jan 28, 2026 · 16 min
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. “Beatitudo” in Latin means “happiness”—the one thing we all want, no matter who we are or what our background is. Jesus, the definitive teacher, is instructing us on what will make us happy—and so we listen.
Unity in Christ
Ep 468 · Jan 22, 2026 · 15 min
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 the better-known and understandable parts, I want to dwell, on purpose, on the strange parts—and they have to do with the lands of Zebulun and Naphtali.
← Back to the show
