Be Attached to God Alone - Bishop Barron's Sunday Sermon

0:00 Peace be with you. Friends, we're reading this week as last week from the 10th chapter of Matthew's Gospel. And, you know, I mentioned last week that though the primary stress in the Gospels is on who Jesus is, look in our great creeds. We don't talk about his teaching at all. We talk about who he is. But I said, and I'll say it again, it doesn't mean we ignore his teaching. I mean, on the contrary. It's because of who he is that we take his teaching with such seriousness. And his teaching is, as always, astonishing. To say, oh, he just echoes with all the great spiritual teachers. Well, there are points of contact, of course. There are points of overlap. But Jesus' teaching, everybody is strange. And if we don't get that, if we say, oh, Jesus' teaching is it's nice to be nice, or be nice to people, love your neighbor. Well, that's pretty superficial. Unless his teaching takes your breath away, you're probably not really getting it.

0:56 So last week, we heard him say to his disciples, fear nobody. And I suggested, I mean, who would take that seriously? How could you possibly go through life not fearing anybody? Fear is a big part of human life, and people use our fears to manipulate us. So that's why they're, you know, fearsome. Well, I can say that if I've made a conversion, a metanoia, a transition from the body, right, the relatively superficial dimension of my life to the soul, the depth dimension. Standing there, I mentioned last week, you could say, like Martin Luther King, the end of his life, I'm not fearing anybody. I've been to the mountaintop. You could be in Teresa of Avila's interior castle, the place of safety, even as, you know, havoc is being wreaked all around you, but you're in the interior castle.

1:50 So that was last week's teaching. You know, something I wanted to mention then, I'll do it now. Look how much of our culture is predicated upon safety, being safe, safe spaces, feeling threatened, and we can't have anybody challenging us, and we have to retreat into our safe place. Fear nobody, Jesus says. To live in this sort of constant fear is an anti-spiritual attitude. It means that we are preoccupied with the goods of the body that we might lose. Metanoia means you move to a deeper place. Okay, that's really what I said last week. I bring it up again because in many ways the teaching today is making the same point but using kind of a different approach or a different image. Last week was fear, things I'm afraid of losing.

2:48 This week, it's detachment. It's what's my relationship to the goods of the world to which I become perhaps inordinately attached. Now, I want to be really careful as I commence this because, as I've said to you many times, Christianity, authentic Christianity, is not puritanical. It doesn't set soul and body in stark opposition. It doesn't put the spiritual and material in stark opposition. No, no. Everything God made is good. The ensemble of what he made is very good. And that means the trees and the water and the mountains and the sky and the planets and the sun. It means the body. Yes, indeed. It means even insects that crawl upon the earth. Genesis goes out of its way to say all these things are good. Why?

3:43 Because many spiritual systems and religions play the dualistic game of, yeah, these material things are including my body. They're real, but they're bad. They're just a source of temptation. And the idea is to escape from that. That's not biblical. So I'm not arguing for that at all. Rather, think in terms of dimensions.

4:05 The soul is a kind of depth dimension of the person that includes the body. Thomas Aquinas, in fact, said that. The soul is in the body, not as contained by it, but rather as containing it. That's the depth dimension of the self we call the soul. Conversion is moving from the superficial dimension of the body to this deeper place. Okay, so we're not anti-matter. We're not against the body, not against the world. What are we against them? turning anything in the world into the summum bonum, Latin for the highest good. Is the world good? Yes. Is it very good? Yes. Is it the summum bonum? No. So there's the tension at the heart of Genesis, right? All these things that come forth in this beautiful, I would call it liturgical procession from God, are indeed good. But watch, they are creatures.

5:17 All these things mentioned in Genesis, from the moon and stars and planets to the earth to mountains to animals, were all in different cultures at that time worshipped as gods, weren't they? Genesis keeps saying, no, no, no, no, no. These things are not God. Beautiful, good, very good, not sumum bonum. So what's the problem? Well, here's how St. Augustine put it with typical pith. When I mistake a creature for the creator, trouble ensues. Look, I've been at this for a long time as a preacher, as a counselor, as a spiritual director. That's one of the most basic insights you can find. When you're working with someone and they're suffering, they're struggling, find the place where they have turned something creaturely into the creator. They've taken something good from the world and made it the summum bonum. See, that's where the trouble always is, spiritually speaking. Okay, how does Jesus make this point? Now, listen to his teaching and prepare to have your breath taken away. Jesus said to his apostles, Whoever loves father or mother more than me is not worthy of me.

6:42 And whoever loves son or daughter more than me is not worthy of me. Now, again, I would say here, put this up against the great religious teachings of the world. There's nothing like this. There's nothing like this. See, what's he choosing on purpose? Of the great goods of the world, he's choosing the highest and the best. Think of a child's love for his parents. Think of a parent's love for his or her children. Those are like the most intense connections you can find, right? among the goods of the world, they're the highest good.

7:35 You know, our families, the people we love the most, you say like, okay, I'll lose everything. I don't care, take the house, take the clothes, take my job, but leave my family, you know, and I'll be okay. We recognize them as among the goods of the world. They're the highest. You know, I think of how often we celebrate this in films and stories and legends. Look at a movie like Life is Beautiful. You know, it's all about a father's incredible and intense love for a child. It's a wonderful life. Or even a movie like Parenthood. I saw that not long ago on TV. And it's a strange, quirky movie. But in some ways, it's about these intense loves that obtain between parents and kids. Think of a book like To Kill a Mockingbird. I hope people still read that.

8:27 It's not been canceled yet. We read it, of course. Everybody read that book. And it's about a father and a child. Go to a higher level. Think of Cordelia's love for her father and King Lear. I mean, these intense connections between parents, children. There's nothing stronger.

8:49 Okay, so revisit it. Whoever loves father or mother more than me is not worthy of me. Whoever loves son or daughter more than me is not worthy of me. What? What are you saying?

9:10 What's he saying? There is a summum bonum. There's a highest good that goes beyond, listen, any of the goods of the world, even the greatest, even the highest. And the spiritual life is all about making the transition to that love of the Lord.

9:37 Deuteronomy 6, the Shema prayer, right? Hear, O Israel, the Lord your God is Lord alone. Therefore, you shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, all your mind, all your soul. One God. We talk about the monotheism of Judaism. We affirm it every time we recite the Creed. Credo in unum deum. I believe in one God. But you see, everybody, how spiritually important that is. That the operative word there is one. One. There's only one summum bonum, highest good.

10:15 Lots of goods in the world. There are the highest worldly goods, like my love, like my parents and my kids. But there's a good beyond all of those. And that must be the focus of my soul. Love the Lord your God with all your heart, all your soul, all your mind, right? How about from Exodus? I, the Lord your God, am a jealous God. It doesn't mean God's falling into an emotional snit. It's making this point. There's no rivalry possible. Oh, wait a minute. I mean, but I love my family more than I love God. No. No, unless you love me more than your mother and father, more than your children. You're not worthy of me. See how extraordinary it is. In light of this, revisit that awful story from the book of Genesis about the sacrifice of Isaac, right?

11:15 Abraham, yes, Lord, here I am. You know, Isaac, your son, your beloved, the child of your old age who will bear the promise. You know, Isaac, yeah, yeah, yeah. I'd like you to sacrifice Isaac to me. Now, as we know, the Lord sends the angel to stop the sacrifice, but what's he doing there? He's testing.

11:38 Does Abraham love the Lord more even than he loves his child? And you say, terrible, what a terrible dilemma. Yeah, it is. But see, that story, it's a test case. It's pressing us into that space where we have to make that decision. unless you love me more than your mother and father, more than your children, more than your very life, you're not worthy of me. See, and this is the whole idea, everybody. You see it in the great spiritual traditions of Christianity, of detachment. It doesn't mean we hate the things of the world. No, no. It doesn't mean we hate our family. Of course not. But it means we are sufficiently detached from those relatively lower goods that we might be completely attached to the sumum bonum, to what God wants. Hard lesson? You bet.

12:42 Look, I've been at this for a long time, and it's the heart of the spiritual challenge. It's what every one of us sinners has to wrestle with. Have we turned creatures into the creator? When you do that, major mischief follows. That's absolutely basic in the spiritual life. And so how do we cleanse and purify our souls that the love of the summum bonum might truly be first?

13:13 Everything hinges upon that. Now, bring these two teachings from these two weeks together. Fear nobody. See, don't be afraid of those paper tigers that can just affect the goods of the body. Rather, you've moved to a deeper level. Fear indeed the one who can kill both body and soul and Gehenna. Fear of the Lord. Same thing here. Don't be attached to even the best goods of the world. Rather, be attached to God alone. Hear, O Israel, the Lord your God is Lord alone. You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, all your soul, all your mind. That's the greatest commandment. And that's the most purifying and cleansing insight in the spiritual life.