Roncalli Newman Catholic Parish - Bishop Barron Gospel Reflections

Wednesday of the Third Week of Easter

5/8/2019

John 6:35-40

Friends, Joseph Ratzinger said that the soul corresponds to our capacity for relationship to God. We have a whole range of intellectual and relational powers, but beyond them all, we have the capacity to know and love God. And since God is eternal, this power links us to eternity, proving that we are not simply limited to space and time. To say that we are nothing but "bodies" which flourish briefly and then fade away is to miss this dimension of our existence. Instead, we speak of souls and of the enduring existence of those who have gone before us into death.

This is why Jesus speaks so readily of eternal life in today’s Gospel: "For this is the will of my Father, that everyone who sees the Son and believes in him may have eternal life, and I shall raise him on the last day." There was a great debate in Jesus’ time within Judaism in regard to this question. Many, including the Sadducees, denied the idea of life after death; but others, including the Pharisees, affirmed it.

Jesus clearly sides with those who affirm it, and his own resurrection from the dead demonstrated this belief as emphatically as possible.

Tuesday of the Third Week of Easter

5/7/2019

John 6:30-35

Friends, today’s Gospel is from the bread of life discourse: "I am the bread of life; whoever comes to me will never hunger, and whoever believes in me will never thirst." What God has wanted from the beginning is to sit down with his creatures in a fellowship banquet, sharing life and laughter, giving, receiving, and giving back again.

This is the loop of grace. The more we receive the divine life, the more we should give it away and thereby get more of it.

Throughout the Old Testament, we find images of the holy banquet. On God’s holy mountain, Isaiah says there will be good meats and pure choice wines. And throughout his ministry, Jesus hosts meals to which all are invited. God wants to share his life with us.

This comes to fullest expression at the Eucharist, where Jesus identifies himself so radically with the bread and the wine that they change into his Body and Blood, and then invites all of us around this table to feast and share life, to give and to receive and to give again.

Monday of the Third Week of Easter

5/6/2019

John 6:22-29

Friends, in today’s Gospel Jesus tells the crowd, which he just fed, to believe in him and relate to him personally. Why is this so hard? Well, it is intellectually counter-intuitive. Why would this one figure, this Jesus, be the one and only? Why should I choose to relate to him and not the numerous other religious leaders and philosophers? Are all other religious people just lost or misguided? Wouldn’t it just be easier to relate to Jesus’ ideas and principles, to imitate his style of life? Yes, indeed it would, but that’s not what he says.

Perhaps we could look at it from Jesus’ side. Jesus wants to be friends: "‘I no longer call you servants, but friends,’ says the Lord." What if there were someone who wanted to be friends with you, and you were to say, "Oh sure! I admire you and would like to imitate your form of life, but I don’t want to spend a lot of time with you." How would that strike your prospective friend?

What is unique to Christianity is that God is offering us friendship. You don’t mess around with friendship; you don’t turn it into something abstract; you don’t compromise with it. You enter into it fully.

Third Sunday of Easter

5/5/2019

John 21:1-19

Friends, we must attend to the mystical depth of today’s Gospel. At the break of dawn, the disciples spy a mysterious figure on the distant shore who shouts out to them, “Children, you have no fish, have you?” When they answer in the negative, he instructs them to cast the net over the right side of the ship. When they do, they bring in a huge catch of fish.

This fishing expedition is a symbol of the Church (the barque of Peter), across space and time, at its apostolic task of seeking souls. The life and work of the Church, John seems to be telling us, will be a lengthy, twilight struggle, a hard toil that will often seem to bear little or no fruit. But after the long night, the dawn of a new life and a new order will break, the transfigured world inaugurated by Jesus. The catch of fish that he makes possible is the totality of people that Christ will gather to himself; it is the new Israel, the eschatological Church.

We know this through a subtle bit of symbolism. When the fish are dragged ashore, John bothers to tell us their exact number, 153—a figure commonly taken in the ancient world to signify the total number of species of fish in the sea.

May 03rd, 2019

5/3/2019

John 14:6-14

Friends, today we read the wonderful and mysterious passage from the fourteenth chapter of John’s Gospel. The disciples are gathered around Jesus at the Last Supper, abiding in intimacy with him, asking questions and seeking wisdom.

Then listen to Jesus’ words: “If you know me, then you will also know my Father. From now on, you do know him and have seen him.” Paul refers to Jesus as the “icon of the invisible God.” What both Jesus and Paul are saying is that Jesus’ words are the Father’s words and his deeds are the Father’s deeds.

Philip, one of the first disciples chosen, still doesn’t get this. He says, “Master, show us the Father.” What he missed was the humility of the Logos: “The words that I speak to you I do not speak on my own. The Father who dwells in me is doing his works.” Neither the words nor the deeds of Jesus are “his own.” They are received from the Father.

Wednesday of the Second Week of Easter

5/1/2019

John 3:16-21

Friends, maybe you've seen informal evangelists at football or baseball games holding up a sign: “John 3:16.” Did you ever wonder what that means?

Well, we hear this verse from the Gospel of John in today’s reading: “God so loved the world that he gave his only Son, so that everyone who believes in him might not perish but might have eternal life.”

I think it's good that those people hold up that sign, because in many ways that is the whole Gospel, and even the whole Christian tradition, in miniature. Every cathedral, every church, every poem, every drama, the life of every saint—that's what they're all about.

Christianity does not announce, primarily, our virtue; it doesn't sing our praises; it doesn't exult in human civilization. What it primarily does is announce that message: that even in our sin—you might say, especially in our sin—God loved us. And so what did he do? He broke open his own heart and he sent his own self into our humanity to heal us and offer us eternal life.

April 30th, 2019

4/30/2019

John 3:7B-15

Friends, after speaking of being born of the Spirit, Jesus says in today’s Gospel: "No one has gone up to heaven except the one who has come down from heaven, the Son of Man. And just as Moses lifted up the serpent in the desert, so must the Son of Man be lifted up, so that everyone who believes in him may have eternal life."

Genesis tells us that, at the beginning, the Spirit of God hovered over the surface of the waters, drawing order from chaos. Creation is nothing but the overflow from the intensity of Trinitarian love. Thus, all things—to the very root of their existence—flow from and are marked by the Spiritus Sanctus (Holy Spirit). He is their ground, their secret origin, their principle.

And more to the point, the Holy Spirit is the end of all things. God has created a dynamic universe, moving restlessly and relentlessly toward a goal, and this goal has been disclosed to us in Christ: the sharing in the love between the Father, who has given his only Son to the world, and the Son, who has offered himself back to the Father.

Memorial of Saint Catherine of Siena

4/29/2019

John 3:1-8

Friends, in today’s Gospel Jesus tells us that no one can enter the kingdom of God without being born of water and Spirit. He says:

"What is born of flesh is flesh and what is born of spirit is spirit. Do not be amazed that I told you, ‘You must be born from above.’ The wind blows where it wills, and you can hear the sound it makes, but you do not know where it comes from or where it goes; so it is with everyone who is born of the Spirit."

The Holy Spirit is the love shared by the Father and the Son; he is, in the lovely image proposed by Fulton Sheen, the sign of affection that goes up when the Father looks at the Son and the Son looks back at the Father.

We have access to this holy heart of God because the Father sent the Son into the world, into our dysfunction, even to the limits of godforsakenness—and thereby gathered all of the world into the dynamism of the divine life. Those who live in Christ are not outside of God as petitioners or supplicants; rather they are in God as friends, sharers in the Spirit.

Friday in the Octave of Easter

4/26/2019

John 21:1-14

Friends, in today’s Gospel the risen Jesus appears to seven disciples on the shore of the Sea of Tiberias. Jesus rose bodily from the dead. This is the fact—eminently surprising and unexpected—that gives birth to Christianity. The excitement that you can sense on every page of the New Testament comes from this novelty.

Why did the risen Jesus appear only to a few? Why didn’t he make himself readily apparent to anyone who wanted to see? Cardinal Newman commented on this. If Jesus had appeared publicly and indiscriminately to all, the power of the Resurrection would have been lessened. Some would believe; others wouldn’t. Some would get it; others wouldn’t. Some would be fascinated; others indifferent.

Instead, he deigned to appear to a small coterie of dedicated disciples who knew him, loved him, understood him—confident that they would be the effective bearers of his message. We are those now who eat and drink with him after his Resurrection. And so we have a commission to announce this Good News.

Thursday in the Octave of Easter

4/25/2019

Luke 24:35-48

Friends, in today’s Gospel the risen Jesus appears to his eleven disciples. They were understandably terrified and thought they were seeing a ghost. But Jesus is quick to disabuse them of this notion: "Look at my hands and my feet, that it is I myself. Touch me and see, because a ghost does not have flesh and bones as you can see I have."

While they were still amazed and incredulous for joy, he stunned them further, saying, "Have you anything here to eat?" With that, they gave him a piece of baked fish, which he ate in their presence.

The bodily resurrection of Jesus—as the first fruits of those who have fallen asleep—is the great sign that heaven and earth are coming together. A body that can be touched and that can consume baked fish has found its way into the realm of heaven.

What does this mean? It means that bodies are not finally alien to God. We have indeed an Advocate in the heavenly places. Were the Resurrection a convenient story or a clever myth, the two realms of heaven and earth would be as separate as ever.

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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