Bishop Barron's Sunday sermon on forgiveness, self-surrender, and the Christian call to mission
Bishop Robert Barron delivers a Sunday sermon connecting St. Paul's letter to the Romans with the Gospel passage about forgiveness.
Summary
Bishop Barron preaches on the 24th Sunday of Ordinary Time, drawing on St. Paul's letter to the Romans — "whether we live or die, we are the Lord's" — to illuminate the familiar Gospel passage in which Jesus tells Peter to forgive not seven times but seventy times seven. His central argument is that the inability to forgive is rooted in a self-preoccupied "baby consciousness" that modern secular culture actively reinforces, and that only a genuine surrender to God and a sense of divine mission can free a person from the grip of resentment. He draws on examples ranging from Augustine's observations on infant selfishness, to primal initiation rituals, to the films Life of Pi and Fury, to make the case that Christian maturity requires moving beyond the ego entirely.
Key Takeaways
FULL TRANSCRIPT
Opening: Reading from Romans 14
Bishop Barron: Peace be with you, friends. Our Gospel for this 24th Sunday of Ordinary Time is the familiar story of Peter asking the Lord how many times should I forgive my brother — seven times? The Lord says no, not seven, but seventy times seven, or seventy-seven times as our translation has it. I will talk about that, but I want to get at it by looking at Reading Two, which is from St. Paul. I think it sheds a distinctive light on this familiar Gospel.
Let's start with Reading Two, which is from the end of Romans. We've been reading from Paul's greatest letter the last several weeks, from the 14th chapter of Romans. Listen:
"None of us lives for oneself. No one dies for oneself. If we live, we live for the Lord. And if we die, we die for the Lord. So then, whether we live or die, we are the Lord's."
That's a really strong statement. My life, my death — all of it is not mine. It's not about me. It belongs to a higher power. It's my life; I'm not denying that. But it belongs to a higher power.
I may have told you before about this, but it always stays in my mind when I come across this reading. When I was in California years ago and they were considering the assisted suicide legislation, there was a billboard touting this proposed law and it said: "My life, my death, my choice." I remember thinking it would be hard to find a statement more directly repugnant to Christianity than that, because it directly contradicts what Paul is saying here. That's the motto of radical modernity — it puts a huge stress on autonomy. It's my life. I decide. I choose. My life, my death, my choice. Don't you tell me what to do.
Christianity, everybody, is playing a very different game.
Paul's Language of Slavery and Self-Surrender
Think too of when Paul says at the beginning of Romans: "I'm a slave of Christ Jesus." Who wants to be anyone's slave? Paul knew all about slavery — it was a very common practice in his time. And he says it without hesitation: I'm a slave. I'm owned by someone else. I'm controlled by somebody else. I'm here to serve not my own purposes, but those of Christ.
How about even more radically: "It is no longer I who live, but Christ who lives in me." All of these, it seems to me, are saying the same thing. Christian life is about the surrendering of one's mind, heart, body, soul — everything — to the higher power of Christ.
Just the other day I was going through the TV and I came across that movie — I don't know how many years ago now, maybe ten or fifteen years — called Life of Pi. I remember reading that book and liking it very much. Then Ang Lee, the great director, directed this film, which is very beautiful to look at and beautifully composed. You know the story: it's this peculiar story about an Indian kid who survives a terrible shipwreck on a small rescue boat, and on the boat with him is a Bengal tiger. That's a sermon for another day. But here's the scene that really stayed with me as I watched the movie again.
The poor kid — his name is Pi — is at the end of his rope. He's been at sea for several weeks, running low on basic supplies, and then a great storm comes, rocking the boat and filling it with water. He feels he has come to the end. He kneels down and utters a prayer — but the prayer is not "Oh, rescue me, God," or "God, send me supplies," or "Lord, get me out of this." He raises his arms and says: "Oh God, I am your vessel."
I thought it was a beautiful prayer, and it's very much in the spirit of St. Paul here. Lord, I'm your vessel. Good times and bad. When things are going great, when I'm at the end of my rope — Lord, I'm your vessel. I'm your slave. I belong to you. Lord, do with my life what you want. That's full, it seems to me, of the spirit of St. Paul.
The Culture of the "Grown-Up Baby"
Now, the problem — as I've just hinted — is that we live in a culture that is teaching us the opposite all the time.
I've told you before about the research done into the initiation rituals of primal peoples. You can find the same pattern all over the world: a young kid is torn away from his comfortable bed late at night by the men of the tribe, and they wound him. They scarify him in some way. They knock a tooth out. Life is hard. When you're a child, yes, you're the center of attention and all your needs are met — but you want to grow up. You have to know life is hard. Then they introduce the kid into the lore and history of the tribe, and then they send him out into the wilderness to survive on his own.
What's the point? Your life isn't about you, kid. A baby thinks that. But a baby consciousness in an adult body — you know what that's called, everybody? Dangerous. And to be honest with you, there's a lot of that around: the consciousness of a baby in the body of an adult who has the powers of an adult.
I was just rereading Augustine for another project I'm working on, toward the beginning of the Confessions. Augustine is not the least bit romantic about children. You know — "Oh, babies, aren't they wonderful?" Augustine's observation is: you look at a baby, what do you see? Original sin. He said, "Thank God the baby's limbs and body are so small, because if he had a strapping body with the mind of a baby — a baby is all about me, give me, I need, I want, I demand — thank God babies have these small bodies so we can sort of control them, because if they were big and had these minds, look out."
Honestly, everybody, we have a culture filled with lots of grown-up babies who have not been initiated. They haven't gotten the lesson that life is hard. They haven't gotten the lesson that your life is not about you. They haven't moved beyond this baby or adolescent phase of self-regard.
Look at some of the research on young people having trouble, as they put it, "adulting." "I'm not ready to adult yet." Well, you better get there, and we better find some ways in our culture to help that process. I came across this just recently as I record these words: the University of Michigan has evidently decided to deal with what they call the mental health crisis of young people by, at least in one of their colleges, not giving grades in the first semester — because getting a grade is apparently so debilitating to these young people, so humiliating, it puts them in such a state of distress. I thought: you think that's going to solve a mental health problem? Talk about exacerbating a mental health problem. Talk about contributing to a mental health problem. Talk about allowing the baby consciousness to endure. That's the problem, everybody. That's the problem.
It's an adult who can say something like, "My life is not about me."
Initiation, Religion, and the Higher Power
Look, if you follow those initiation rituals all the way to the end, yes, they're meant to convince the child that life is rough, that he can survive on his own. But the ultimate purpose of those rituals — and this is true across cultures — is religious. At the end of that process, in the jungle or the tundra, when they're surviving alone, they're meant to come into contact with the higher power. They're meant to come into contact with God. And only then — only then — are they ready to serve the tribe, to serve the community. Grown-up babies cannot serve the community. They'll do damage to the community.
I can't help but see a correlation between the bracketing of religion and this problem. It's fair to say we are the first generation in recorded human history to be largely secularized. Every generation before us, no matter what the culture, believed in God, the gods, the spiritual dimension. And what I'm driving at here is this: when you bracket God, you're thrown back onto your own ego. If there's no God, then the ultimate value is me. If the ultimate concern is me, that leads to a culture of grown-up babies.
Connecting Paul to the Gospel: Forgiveness and Mission
Now, I promised I was going to look at Paul in order to illuminate the Gospel, so I want to make that connection.
Peter approaches Jesus and asks him: "Lord, if my brother sins against me, how often must I forgive? As many as seven times?" Jesus answered: "I say to you, not seven times, but seventy-seven times."
Here's the light I think Paul sheds on this. What is it that prevents us from forgiving people? It's an intense self-regard. I've been wounded. You hurt me in some way, and I am not getting over that. Maybe it's time to get on with your life. No — I'm not getting on with my life until I get this thing resolved, until he apologizes. I am not going to forgive. It's a self-preoccupation that prevents forgiveness.
Here's why that matters. When I forgive people who've harmed me — and let's say they really have harmed me, they really have done something terrible or unjust — if I can't forgive them, then I can't get on with my mission. I'm stuck. I can't do what God wants me to do because I'm so preoccupied with my wounded ego. And you're preoccupied with your wounded ego. And now what are we doing? Looking at each other with resentment, rather than looking together toward God and what God wants us to do. The inability to forgive is a function of this baby consciousness that precludes mission.
When you're clear on the mission — when you are in touch with God and God's purposes, when you know that my life isn't about me — then you can let go of harms done to you. You can forgive them, because you want to get on with the business of your life, which is doing the will of God.
The Film Fury and the Power of Common Mission
I mentioned the movie Life of Pi. Here's another one that comes to mind. I like war movies, and one of the better war movies in recent years is a film called Fury. Brad Pitt is in it, and Shia LaBeouf is in it. It's about a tank crew toward the end of the Second World War. In the course of the movie, you see these guys are at each other's throats all the time — mad at each other, offending each other, not getting along. Until at the very end, the tank is broken down. They're at a crossroads, and one option is just to hightail it out of there. But Brad Pitt, who's the leader of the group, says: "No, I'm going to stay and fight here." And then one by one, the other men — even though they know it's a desperate situation — say: "Okay, I'll stay with you. I'll fight too." One by one. And they get over their resentments. They're able to forgive each other because they've accepted a common mission.
There's a beautiful scene where they're inside the tank and they bond as a team. When you're clear on the mission — your life's not about you, it's not about you, whether I live or die I belong to the Lord, I'm the Lord's, I'm not my own — then you can let go of resentments. You can say with Jesus: I'll forgive seventy times seven. I'm not going to get stuck at that level. I'm going to break through my adolescent baby consciousness because I'm about the mission.
That's what he wants to do — liberate his followers for their mission. That's why he says not just seven times, but seventy times seven.
Think about that, everybody, especially if you feel caught in nets and webs of resentment and the inability to forgive. Your life isn't about you. Your ego is not what matters. You belong to the Lord.
God bless you.