Word on Fire Reflection

Bishop Robert Barron Friends, in today’s Gospel, Jesus prescribes the essential disciplines of prayer, fasting, and almsgiving. Let’s focus on fasting and almsgiving. The appetites for food and drink are so pressing, so elemental, that, unless they are quelled and disciplined, they will simply take over the soul. They are like children who clamor constantly … Read moreWednesday, June 21, 2023

Bishop Robert Barron Friends, today, in the Sermon on the Mount, the Lord commands us to love our enemies. What is the test of love? Jesus couldn’t be clearer in the discourse he delivers the night before he died. “No one has greater love than this, to lay down one’s life for one’s friends.” If … Read moreTuesday, June 20, 2023

Bishop Robert Barron Friends, today, in the Sermon on the Mount, the Lord exhorts us to nonresistance to evil. Martin Luther King Jr. was deeply influenced by Mahatma Gandhi’s techniques, and Gandhi learned them, largely, from the Sermon on the Mount. Both Gandhi and King appreciated that the text dealing with the nonresistance to evil … Read moreMonday, June 19, 2023

Bishop Robert Barron Friends, in today’s Gospel, Jesus summons Apostles whom he shapes and sends on mission. Priests, through the centuries—from Augustine and Aquinas, to Francis Xavier and John Henry Newman, to John Paul II—are the descendants of those first friends and apprentices of the Lord. They have been needed in every age, and they … Read moreSunday, June 18, 2023

Bishop Robert Barron Friends, today we celebrate the Memorial of the Immaculate Heart of the Blessed Virgin Mary. In 1854, Pope Pius IX declared the dogma of the Immaculate Conception—the truth that Mary, through a special grace, was preserved free from original sin from the first moment of her conception.  Were this not the case, … Read moreSaturday, June 17, 2023

Bishop Robert Barron Friends, in today’s Gospel, the Lord offers to relieve our burdens: “Take my yoke upon you . . . and you will find rest for yourselves.” Jesus almost always speaks in paradoxes, and this is another one. “I will put a yoke on you.” Now, if I am burdened, the last thing … Read moreFriday, June 16, 2023

Bishop Robert Barron Friends, in today’s Gospel, Jesus commands us to be reconciled with one another. I want to say something about the role of forgiveness in repairing our broken relationships. When you are at worship and realize that you need to forgive someone (or be forgiven by someone), go and do it. Go get … Read moreThursday, June 15, 2023

Bishop Robert Barron Friends, in today’s Gospel, Jesus promises that he has not come to abolish the Law but to fulfill it. Matthew says that Jesus went up a mountain, sat down, and commenced to teach, calling to mind Moses, who went up Mount Sinai to receive the Ten Commandments from God.  Therefore, Jesus is … Read moreWednesday, June 14, 2023

Bishop Robert Barron Friends, in today’s Gospel, Jesus asks, “If salt loses its taste, with what can it be seasoned?” That question ought to bother us as much today as it did Jesus’ audience long ago. What he means is that a weak Christianity is a disaster for the world, for it depends upon the … Read moreTuesday, June 13, 2023

Bishop Robert Barron Friends, in today’s Gospel, Jesus goes up a mountain and sits down to teach. In the Old Testament, we find Moses, the great teacher, also going up a mountain to receive the Law and then sitting down to teach it. However, Jesus is not receiving a law; he is giving one. Theologian … Read moreMonday, June 12, 2023