Bishop Barron’s Sunday Sermons - Catholic Preaching and Homilies

Friends, our readings for the fourth and final Sunday of Advent are all about maybe the central motif of the spiritual life. Our culture today is so self-oriented: It’s all about me and my choice. But that attitude is directly repugnant to the Bible; in fact, the Bible is constantly trying to move us out of that space and into a different space—namely, one of surrender to the higher purpose of God.

Friends, our readings for this Third Sunday of Advent help us understand what to do while we wait for the Lord. An Advent spirituality of waiting is part of Christian life; our entire life, in a way, is waiting. We pray, “Come, Lord Jesus,” waiting for Christ to come back. But this is not just a passive stance; there is a lot to do while we wait.

Friends, our first reading for this Second Sunday of Advent, taken from Isaiah 11, describes the Messiah’s arrival: He “shall sprout from the stump of Jesse,” and “the spirit of the LORD shall rest upon him.” The Messiah, we hear, will come bearing seven gifts of the Holy Spirit, gifts that come to full expression in him. The Advent season is a time of longing for these gifts—watching, waiting, and praying for them.

Friends, we come to the New Year celebration of the liturgical year: the First Sunday of Advent. This is the season of sacred waiting—four weeks of looking, hoping, and watching, with a kind of joyful anticipation, for the adventus (coming) of the Savior. If you’re like me, you rather hate to wait. Yet waiting is all over the Bible, and at the heart of it is the painful process of decentering the ego.

Friends, we come to the final weekend of the liturgical year and the celebration of the Solemnity of Christ the King. Now, our country was formed in rebellion against a king, and kingship as a political reality is far removed from us. But what does kingship mean for us spiritually? In a word, everything. If you’re baptized, you’re a king, because you’re conformed to Christ, who is priest, prophet, and king. And your job, wherever God puts you, is to order things—first and foremost in your own soul—toward the end of God’s kingdom.