Roncalli Newman Catholic Parish - Bishop Barron Gospel Reflections

First Week of Lent

3/14/2019

Matthew 7:7-12

Friends, today’s Gospel assures us of the power of prayer. When some people ask in a spirit of trust, really believing that what they are asking for will happen, it happens. Just as Jesus suggests in the Gospel, “Everyone who asks, receives; and the one who seeks, finds; and to the one who knocks, the door will be opened.”

The power of prayer is the confidence that we are being guided and cared for, even when that guidance and care are not immediately apparent. It is what allows someone to live in detachment from all of the ups and downs of life. In the language of Ignatius: “Lord, I don’t care whether I have a long life or a short life, whether I am rich or poor, whether I am healthy or sick.”

Someone that lives in that kind of detachment is free, and because they are free, they are powerful. They are beyond the threats that arise in the context of this world. This is the source of dynamis, real power. This is the power that Martin Luther King, Dorothy Day, and John Paul II wielded: world-changing power.

Reflect: Can you honestly say with St. Ignatius: “Lord, I don’t care whether I have a long life or a short life, whether I am rich or poor, whether I am healthy or sick”? Why or why not?

First Week of Lent

3/12/2019

Matthew 6:7-15

Friends, the Gospel for today is of great significance, for in it the Son of God teaches us to pray. We hear from not just a guru, a spiritual teacher, or a religious genius, but from the very Son of God. This is why the Our Father, the Lord’s Prayer, is the model of all prayer.

The Lord’s Prayer is the prayer for the Christian journey which has been offered up consistently for the past two thousand years. Think for a moment how this prayer links us to all of the great figures in Christian history, from Peter and Paul to Augustine, Thomas Aquinas, Francis of Assisi, John Henry Newman, G.K. Chesterton, John Paul II, and right up to the present day.

Keep in mind that prayer is not designed so much to change God’s mind or to tell God something he doesn’t know. God isn’t like a big city boss or a reluctant pasha whom we have to persuade. Rather, he is the one who wants nothing other than to give us good things—though they might not always be the things we want.

Reflect: Pray the Lord’s Prayer slowly. What word or phrase stands out? Meditate on that word or phrase as an additional prayer.

First Week of Lent

3/11/2019

Matthew 25:31-46

Friends, in our Gospel today Jesus tells the crowd that the Son of Man will welcome the righteous into the kingdom, saying: "For I was hungry and you gave me food, I was thirsty and you gave me drink, a stranger and you welcomed me, naked and you clothed me, ill and you cared for me, in prison and you visited me." Puzzled, the righteous will ask when they did this, and he will reply, "Whatever you did for one of these least brothers of mine, you did for me."

This is a powerful evocation of Jesus’ teaching about the mutuality of our love for God and neighbor. The absolute love for God is not in competition with a radical commitment to love our fellow human beings, precisely because God is not one being among many, but the very ground of our existence.

Someone who operated very much in the spirit of this teaching was Saint Teresa of Calcutta. A writer was once conversing with her, searching out the sources of her spirituality and mission. At the end of their long talk, she asked him to spread his hand out on the table. Touching his fingers one by one as she spoke the words, she said, "You did it to me."

Reflect: Identify a needy person in your life, whether that need is
a physical or spiritual one. What can you do in the next week for that
person?

First Sunday of Lent

3/10/2019

Luke 4:1-13

Friends, in our Gospel for the First Sunday of Lent, Luke gives us the story of the temptation in the desert. At every point in the Gospels, we are meant to identify with Jesus. God became man that man might become God. We participate in him and thereby learn what a godly life is like.

Jesus has just been baptized; he has just learned his deepest identity and mission. And now he confronts—as we all must—the great temptations. What precisely is entailed in being the beloved Son of God?

First, the tempter urges him to use his divine power to satisfy his bodily desires, which Jesus dismisses with a word. Having failed at his first attempt, the devil plays a subtler game—the temptation faced by Adam and Eve in the garden: you will decide how and when God will act.

And then the last and perhaps greatest of the temptations: power. Power is extremely seductive. Many would gladly eschew material things or attention or fame in order to get it. Jesus’ great answer in Matthew’s account of this story is "Get away, Satan!" To seek power is to serve Satan—it is stated that bluntly.

Reflect: Which false idol--pleasure, power, honor, or wealth--tempts you the most? Why?

March 08th, 2019

3/8/2019

Matthew 9:14-15

Friends, in today’s Gospel, people ask Jesus why he and his disciples do not fast when John and his disciples do. Jesus’ answer is wonderful: "How can the guests at a wedding fast while the groom is still with them?" Could you imagine people fasting at a wedding banquet? It would be ridiculous!

Jesus later says, "No one pours new wine into old wineskins." The new wine is the Gospel. The receptacle for this wine must be conformed to it, not the other way around.

To take in the Good News, we can’t be living in the cramped space of our sinful souls. We can’t have an "expect the worst" attitude. Instead we repent, or change the minds that we have. Another way to get at this is to say that like is known by like. If God is love, then only a soul that is on fire with love will properly take him in.

Reflect: What benefit do you see from fasting?

Thursday after Ash Wednesday

3/7/2019

Luke 9:22-25

Friends, our Gospel today from Luke lays out Jesus’ conditions for discipleship: "If anyone wishes to come after me, he must deny himself and take up his cross daily and follow me. For whoever wishes to save his life will lose it, but whoever loses his life for my sake will save it."

How do we overcome pain? How do we attain joy? Not from a Stoic resignation, nor from a Buddhist negation of the self, nor from a Platonic contemplation of the eternal forms, but rather from the sacrifice of the self in love. Jesus is going to Jerusalem in order to give himself away, to sacrifice himself in love for the other—and in this, he will become a source of life to others.

Ronald Knox talked about the sign of the cross this way: the first two gestures form the letter "I" and the next two cross it out. That’s what the cross of Jesus meant and means. The path of discipleship is the path of self-sacrificing love—and that means the path of suffering.

Reflect: How there is no authentic love without suffering? Think of examples in your own life.

Ash Wednesday

3/6/2019

MATTHEW 6:1-6, 16-18

Friends, today’s Gospel asks us to do three things: pray, fast, and give alms. Let’s focus today on prayer. Studies show that prayer is a very common, very popular activity. Even those who profess no belief in God pray!

What is prayer, and how should we pray? Prayer is intimate communion and conversation with God. Judging from Jesus’ own life, prayer is something that we ought to do often, especially at key moments of our lives.

Well, how should we pray? What does it look like? You have to pray with faith, and according to Jesus’ model, you have to pray with forgiveness. The efficacy of prayer seems to depend on the reconciliation of differences.

You also have to pray with persistence. One reason that we don’t receive what we want through prayer is that we give up too easily. Augustine said that God sometimes delays in giving us what we want because he wants our hearts to expand.

Finally, we have to pray in Jesus’ name. In doing so we are relying on his influence with the Father, trusting that the Father will listen to him.

Reflect: How is the Lord’s Prayer a good model of what our prayer should contain in terms of praise, forgiveness, and petition?

Eighth Week in Ordinary Time

3/5/2019

Mark 10:28-31

Friends, today’s Gospel exhorts us to see the radicality and rewards of Jesus’ call to discipleship, which cuts through so many of the social conventions of his time and ours. He urges us to see that everyone—rich and poor, men and women, those on the inside and those on the outs—is summoned to discipleship, and that this summons is the most important consideration of all. It is the better part, to use Jesus’ words; it is the one thing necessary.

St. Augustine was right: "Lord, you have made us for yourself; therefore, our heart is restless until it rests in thee." We are all wired for God. There is a hunger in us that nothing in this world can possibly satisfy. Only Jesus can lead us to the heavenly banquet; and that’s why we must follow him.

Eighth Week in Ordinary Time

3/4/2019

Mark 10:17-27

Friends, in today’s Gospel a rich young man asks Jesus what he must do to inherit eternal life. There is something absolutely right about the young man, something spiritually alive, and that is his deep desire to share in everlasting life. He knows what he wants, and he knows where to find it.

Jesus responds to his wonderful question by enumerating many of the commandments. The young man takes this in and replies, "Teacher, I have kept all these since my childhood." So Jesus looks at him with love and says, "Go and sell what you have and give to the poor. After that come follow me."

God is nothing but love straight through, and therefore the life of friendship with him, in the richest sense, is a life of total, self-forgetting love. Jesus senses that this young man is ready for the high adventure of the spiritual life; he is asking the right question and he is properly prepared.

But at this point, the young man tragically balks. The spiritual life, at the highest pitch, is about giving your life away, and this is why having many possessions is a problem.

Eighth Sunday in Ordinary Time

3/3/2019

Luke 6:39-45

Friends, in today’s Gospel Jesus commands us to stop judging others. He asks, “Why do you notice the splinter in your brother’s eye, but do not perceive the wooden beam in your own eye?” We are exceptionally good at seeing the fault in others, but we are exceptionally adept at ignoring it in ourselves.

There was a very popular book that came out when I was a teenager. It was called I’m Okay and You’re Okay. It represented the culture of exculpation and feel-good-about-yourself. Not many years ago, Christina Aguilera crooned, “I am beautiful in every single way and words can’t bring me down.” Look at so many of the debates today: the attitude that is winning is one of self-invention and self-assertion. Who are you to tell me how to behave?

In all of this, we are fundamentally looking away from our guilt, our fault, our darkness. We are effectively drugging ourselves, dulling the pain of real self-consciousness. In the process, we turn ourselves into God, pretending to be absolute, flawless, and impervious to criticism. So “remove the wooden beam from your eye first; then you will see clearly to remove the splinter from your brother’s eye.”

Eagle Catholic

is a daily devotional based on the Mass readings of the day, the saint of the day or any other topic worthy of reflection in light of Catholic tradition.
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