Bishop Barron’s Sunday Sermons - Catholic Preaching and Homilies

Friends, on this Twenty-ninth Sunday of the year, our Gospel features the question from the Pharisees about paying taxes. In response to the trap, Jesus offers one of the most famous one-liners in history: “Repay to Caesar what belongs to Caesar and to God what belongs to God." His answer didn’t automatically solve the problem of the relationship between church and state, but it did point the way through two opposite extremes, both of which are predicated on a false understanding of how God relates to the world.

Friends, our Gospel today is the parable of the wedding banquet, and like all the parables, it’s kind of unsettling. What we’re meant to see is that this invitation from the king is the greatest invitation possible. God the Father is asking you, personally, to come to the marriage feast for his son. Therefore, the refusal to accept that offer is the central tragedy of the spiritual life. Will you say yes to God’s invitation? And not only that, but will you behave as someone who is worthy of being in God’s house?

Friends, in our second reading this Sunday, Paul tells the church of Philippi, “Have no anxiety at all.” It’s hard to imagine that Paul—who was shipwrecked many times, beaten within an inch of his life, threatened and harassed and persecuted and opposed, and finally arrested, dragged to Rome, and decapitated—never experienced any anxiety. So what does he mean? What he says next is the clue: “But in everything, by prayer and petition, with thanksgiving, make your requests known to God.”

Friends, our second reading, a passage from the second chapter of Paul to the Philippians, is one of the master texts in the New Testament. It’s not only ancient and poetic but also substantive; indeed, in some ways, it lays out the whole of Christianity. Adapting an early Christian hymn, Paul presents the answer to Adam’s grasp at divinity—namely, the self-emptying love of God.

Friends for this Twenty-fifth Sunday in Ordinary Time, we hear a story from Jesus that tends to bother everybody: the parable of the laborers in the vineyard. We’re meant to hear our own voices in the complaint of these workers. Dealing with God, we often think things are unfair. Why does he do what he does? I’d like to get at this with a clarification that comes out of the heart of the spiritual tradition: You don’t fall in love with the benefits of God; you fall in love with God.