Source: Bishop Robert Barron via youtube.com Friends, why is art important? An uptick in vandalism against famous pieces of art, calling to mind outbreaks of iconoclasm throughout history, has raised questions about art’s value and purpose. On today’s “Word on Fire Show,” I discuss with Brandon Vogt why art matters. […]
Tag: Bishop Robert Barron
What’s Our Church’s Growth Strategy?
Source: Bishop Robert Barron via YouTube.com Friends, in many parts of the world the Catholic Church is shrinking. Parishes are closing or merging, pastors are devising strategies of consolidation. But for the Church to flourish, we can’t just manage decline. We need strategies for growth. That’s what Brandon Vogt and […]
The Reality of Life After Death
Source: Bishop Robert Barron via YouTube.com. Friends, our first reading and our Gospel for this weekend have a special resonance for our time because they both speak clearly about life after death. Our dominant secularist or materialist ideology says that matter in motion is all there is; the world came […]
Christ Can Heal Us
Source: Bishop Robert Barron via YouTube.com. Friends, the Gospel for this Sunday is one of Jesus’ best-known parables: the story of the Good Samaritan. Karl Barth, who learned it from the Church Fathers, taught that every parable of Jesus, at the deeper level, is finally about Jesus himself. The parable […]
The Spiritual Life is a Battle
Source: Bishop Robert Barron via YouTube.com Friends, our first reading for this Sunday is about a battle between Israel and the Amalekites. To many of us today, this appears to be either an irrelevancy of history or an outrageous story about God sanctioning genocide. But Origen of Alexandria helps us […]
Don’t Demonize – or Divinize – the Powerful
Source: Bishop Robert Barron via YouTube Friends, the first and second readings this Sunday beautifully show both sides of Catholic social teaching: the balance between recognizing political, economic, and social power, and criticizing the abuse of that power. We should not demonize our leaders; we pray for them, and we […]
Act Against Your Attachments.
Source: Bishop Robert Barron via youtube.com Friends, at the heart of what St. Ignatius of Loyola teaches in the “Spiritual Exercises” is the idea of detachment. If we are to do the will of God, then we have to become detached from the worldly goods to which we are addicted. […]
Bishop Barron Presents: Shia LaBeouf – Padre Pio and the Friars
Source: Bishop Robert Barron via youtube.com. Friends, in the latest “Bishop Barron Presents,” I’m delighted to be joined by Shia LaBeouf, the actor famous for “Transformers,” “Honey Boy,” and “The Peanut Butter Falcon,” among other films. His most recent role is as the young Padre Pio in a new biopic […]
Let Christ Light a Fire in You
Source: Bishop Robert Barron via YouTube Friends, the readings for this weekend are tough. Here is the principle behind them, one that is simple to state, but difficult to take in: in a world gone wrong, those who come to us speaking and embodying the truth are going to be […]
Give Away the Grace You’ve Been Given
Friends, Jesus tells us his messiahship is one of service, not self-interest. As sinners, we have a tendency to understand our religious lives in a self-interested way, but the grace God gives us is meant to be given away. SUBSCRIBE to my YouTube channel to watch every Sunday Sermon: https://bit.ly/wof-subscribe […]
Your Water into God’s Wine
Source: Bishop Robert Barron via YouTube Friends, this week we resume Ordinary Time, and the Church gives us this extraordinary story of the first sign of Christ’s divinity—the miracle at Cana. Why is the first of Jesus’ miracles turning water into wine at a wedding? Because Jesus himself is the […]
Why Equity, Diversity, and Inclusivity Are Not Absolute Values
Source: Bishop Robert Barron via YouTube Friends, there is a healthy and necessary tension between inclusion and exclusion in any rightly ordered society, including the Church. Are equity, diversity, and inclusivity valuable? Yes, precisely in the measure that they are expressions of love; no, in the measure that they stand […]