You Belong to the Lord – Bishop Barron's Sunday Sermon

0:00 Peace be with you. Friends, our gospel for this 24th Sunday of Ordinary Time is the familiar story of Peter asking the Lord, you know, how many times should I forgive my brother? Seven. The Lord says, no, no, not seven, but 70 times, seven times, or 77 times, as our translation has it. And I will talk about that, but I want to get at it by looking at reading number two, which is from St. Paul. And I think it sheds a distinctive light on this familiar gospel. Let's start, though, 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.

0:53 it. My life, my death, all of it is not mine. It's not about me. It belongs to the Lord. It's my life. I'm not denying that, but it belongs to a higher power. I might 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 thing, there was a billboard that was 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. But see, that's the model of radical modernity that 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 think too 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 i'm a slave i 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's no longer I who live, but Christ who lives in me. All of these, 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. You know, just the other day, I was going through the TV, And I came across that movie now from, I don't know, how many years ago?

2:51 Time goes by so fast. Maybe it's 10, 15 years ago. It's called The Life of Pi. I remember reading that book and liking it very much. And then Ang Lee, the great director, directed this movie, which is very beautiful to look at. It's a beautifully composed film. You know the story. It's this peculiar story about this Indian kid that survives a terrible shipwreck on this small rescue boat. And on the boat with him is a Bengal tiger. Now, that's sermon for another day, that whole thing. But here's the scene that really stayed with me as I watched the movie again. So the poor kid, his name is Pi, he's at the end of his rope. He's been at sea for, I think, several weeks. He's running low on basic supplies. And then this great storm comes, and it's rocking the boat and filling the boat with water. And he just feels, I've come to the end.

3:45 and he kneels down and he 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 he says, oh, God, I am your vessel. And 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. Now, the problem, as I've just hinted, is we live in a culture that is teaching us the opposite all the time. I told you before about the research done into these initiation rituals of primal peoples.

4:47 You can find the same pattern all over the world, where 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 some way, they knock a tooth out. Life's hard. I mean, when you're a child, yeah, you're the center of attention, and all your needs are met. But you want to grow up. No, you got to know life is hard. Then they introduce the kid into the lore and the 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? You know what that's called, everybody? Dangerous. And to be honest with you, There's a lot of that around.

5:40 The consciousness of a baby in the body of an adult who has the powers of an adult. You know what's interesting here? I was just rereading Augustine for another project I'm working on. And it's toward the beginning of the Confessions, Augustine. He's 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 this strapping body with the mind of a baby, a baby is all about me, mine, give me, I need, I want, I demand.

6:24 Thank God babies have these small bodies, so we can sort of control them. Because if they were big and they had their minds, look out. Well, honestly, everybody, we got 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 this research on kids, young people, having trouble, as they put it, adulting. Hey, you're adulting here. 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 now just recently as I record these words.

7:19 University of Michigan evidently has decided to deal with the mental health crisis, as they put it, of young people. that, at least in one of their colleges, they're not going to give grades in the first semester because getting a grade is so evidently debilitating to these young people. It's so humiliating. It puts them in such a state of mind. I'm like, 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. 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.

8:13 It's meant to, you know, he can survive on his own. But the ultimate purpose of those, this is true across cultures, the ultimate purpose is religious because at the end of that process in the jungle or the tundra when they're surviving, they're meant to come into contact with the higher power. They're meant to come into contact with God. And see, only then, only then are they ready to serve the tribe, to serve the community. Baby, grown-up babies cannot serve the community. They'll do damage to the community. You know, I can't help but see a correlation between the bracketing of religion. You know, this is fair to say. We're the first generation in recorded human history to be largely secularized. I mean, every generation before us, no matter what the culture, people believed in God, the gods, the spiritual dimension.

9:16 And see, what I'm driving at here is when you bracket God, you're thrown back onto your own ego. If there's no God, well, then the ultimate value is me. The ultimate concern is me. That leads to a culture of grown-up babies. Okay, now I promised you I was going to just look at Paul in order to illumine the gospel, so I want to make that connection now. Peter approaches Jesus, 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 77 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 hey you know maybe it's time to get on with your life no no no i'm not getting on my life until i get this thing solved until he apologizes i am not going to forgive it's a self-preoccupation that prevents us from forgiveness.

10:33 Now, here's why. Here's why. Because 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, but if I can't forgive them, then I can't get on with my mission. I'm stuck. I'm stuck. and 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 we all are. And now what are we doing? Looking at each other with resentment. Listen, rather than looking together to God and what God wants us to do. You see, the lack of, the inability to forgive is a function of this baby consciousness. that precludes mission.

11:27 See, when you're clear, let's flip it around, when you're clear on the mission, when you are in touch with God and God's purposes, when you know my life isn't about me, well, then I can let go of harms done to me. I can forgive them because I want to get on with the business of my life, which is doing the will of God. I mentioned the movie Life of Pi. Here's another one that comes to mind here. I like war movies. And one of the better war movies in recent years is a movie called Fury. Brad Pitt's in it and Shia LaBeouf's in it. It's about this, you know, real tough, toward the end of the Second World War, this tank crew. Anyway, in the course of the movie, you see these guys are each other's throats all the time. And they're mad at each other. And they're offending each other. And they want to kill each other. They're not getting along, these men, you know. Until at the very end, the tank is broken down. They're at this crossroad.

12:20 And one option is just to, you know, hightail it out of there. But Brad Pitt, who's the leader of the group, says, no, 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, desperate situation, they 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 when they're inside the tank and they kind of bond as a team.

12:56 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, see, I can let go of resentment. I can say with Jesus, I'll forgive 70 times, seven times. See, 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.

13:28 He wants to liberate his followers here for their mission. And that's why he says, no, not just seven times, but 70 times, seven times. 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