Does God Punish Us?

Bishop Barron’s Sunday Sermons - Catholic Preaching and Homilies

Bishop Robert Barron

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

4.8 • 4.6K Ratings

🗓️ 20 August 2025

⏱️ 15 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

Friends, I want to focus this week on the second reading, which is from the marvelous Letter to the Hebrews. It addresses a very important and very controversial topic—namely, the divine punishment. You would be hard-pressed to say that this is not a motif in the Bible. That’s simply not the case; in fact, it’s a rather major motif. How do we make sense of this theme of divine punishment without falling back into a terrible view of God as an arbitrary, capricious tyrant? This little passage from Hebrews gives us the interpretive key.

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.
0:39.2	Peace be with you.
0:40.3	Friends, our gospel is the famous question to Jesus, you know, how many will be saved?
0:44.5	I know it's everyone's favorite question.
0:46.5	I'm not going to preach on it.
0:47.9	I preached on it a lot.
0:49.3	I've written a lot so you can consult those.
0:51.9	But I want to focus on the second reading, which is from the
0:55.1	marvelous letter to the Hebrews we've been reading from. And it's a topic that is also very
	...

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