Are You Revolving Around God—Or God Around You?

Bishop Barron’s Sunday Sermons - Catholic Preaching and Homilies

Bishop Robert Barron

Spirituality, Christianity, Religion & Spirituality:christianity, Religion & Spirituality

4.8 • 4.6K Ratings

🗓️ 21 October 2025

⏱️ 14 minutes

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Summary

Friends, for this Thirtieth Sunday of Ordinary Time, we are treated to the wonderful and deeply challenging parable of the Pharisee and the publican from Luke 18. We are meant to see in this deceptively simple story a basic and clarifying principle in the spiritual order—namely, that the ego is meant to revolve around God, not God around the ego. And this might not be immediately clear: Sometimes the people that look the most religious actually aren’t very religious, and the people that look a million miles from God are actually in the right spiritual space.

Transcript

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0:00.0	Friends, welcome to Word on Fire Catholic Ministries.
0:04.0	Word on Fire is an apostolate dedicated to the mission of evangelization,
0:09.0	using media both old and new to share the faith on every continent
0:14.0	and to facilitate an encounter with Christ and His Church.
0:18.0	The efforts of Word on Fire engage the culture
0:21.4	and bring the transformative power
0:24.0	of God's Word
0:25.0	where it is most needed.
0:27.2	Today, we invite you to join
0:29.0	Bishop Robert Barron
0:30.3	as he preaches the gospel
0:31.8	and shares the warmth
0:33.3	and light of Christ
0:34.7	with each one of us.
0:38.3	Peace be with you. Friends, for this 30th Sunday of ordinary time, we are treated to this wonderful and deeply challenging parable from the 18th chapter of Luke.
0:49.3	The famous parable of the Pharisee and the publican, the Pharisee and the tax collector. We're meant to see in this
0:57.0	deceptively simple story, it's actually chock full of spiritual insight. We're meant to see a basic
1:03.3	principle in the spiritual order, one that is extremely clarifying. And let me just state it
1:09.9	right at the outset here. Here's the principle.
1:12.6	The ego is meant to revolve around God, not God around the ego.
1:20.6	Let me say it again. So the ego, think of like a Copernican revolution here.
1:25.6	The ego is meant to revolve around God.
	...

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