The Natural Law

Bishop Barron’s Sunday Sermons - Catholic Preaching and Homilies

Bishop Robert Barron

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

4.8 • 4.6K Ratings

🗓️ 8 July 2025

⏱️ 15 minutes

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Summary

Friends, in our first reading from the book of Deuteronomy this week, Moses says to the people, “For this command that I enjoin on you today is not too mysterious and remote for you. . . . No, it is something very near to you, already in your mouths and in your hearts; you have only to carry it out.” This is a master text for what we call in the Catholic tradition “the natural law.” It means that there is within us a kind of deep moral intuition by which we know the right thing to do; there are intuitions of value that give us a sense of meaning, purpose, and direction in life.

Transcript

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0:00.0	Friends, welcome to Word on Fire Catholic Ministries. 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 and to facilitate an encounter with Christ and his church.
0:19.0	The efforts of Word on Fire engage the culture and bring the
0:22.9	transformative power of God's Word where it is most needed. Today, we invite you to join Bishop
0:29.7	Robert Barron as he preaches the gospel and shares the warmth and light of Christ with each one of us.
0:39.3	Peace be with you, friends, for this 15th Sunday of ordinary time, we get to read from the book of
0:43.8	Deuteronomy, which is a marvelous text, of course, in the Old Testament. It means literally
0:49.1	the second law. So a lot of it's about the laws and commandments God gives to his people.
0:54.1	There's a line, though, in this passage that's really interesting, because Moses, And so a lot of it's about the laws and commandments God gives to his people.
0:58.8	There's a line, though, in this passage that's really interesting because Moses talks to the people about the law not being kind of up there, out there someplace, some external,
1:04.9	you know, arbitrary command given from on high, but rather what?
1:08.9	Listen, for this command I enjoining you today is not too
1:13.5	mysterious and remote for you. It's not up in the sky that you should say, who go up in the
1:18.5	sky to get it for us? No, it's something very near to you already in your mouths and in your heart.
1:26.8	You only have to carry it out.
1:28.3	Well, it's a master text for what we call in the Catholic tradition the natural law.
1:35.3	Maybe you've heard that term when people talk about the moral life.
1:38.3	There's a natural law theory.
1:41.3	What it means is exactly this, that there is within us a kind of deep moral
1:47.0	intuition by which we know the right thing to do. As a set of, call them intuitions of value
1:55.4	that give us a sense of meaning, purpose, and direction in life. We can read with our rational minds certain
2:03.9	moral intelligibilities. The Ten Commandments, you might say, would be an explicitation of this
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