We're All in the Same Boat

Bishop Barron’s Sunday Sermons - Catholic Preaching and Homilies

Bishop Robert Barron

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

4.8 • 4.9K Ratings

🗓️ 29 April 2001

⏱️ 15 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

At the end of his gospel, St. John presents a beautiful icon of the Church. Peter and his companions are fishing on the Sea of Tiberias. When they look to the risen Christ, they have success, hauling in a catch that symbolizes all the people of the world. This is the Church at its best: illumined by Christ, it gathers the nations into the ark of salvation.

Transcript

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0:00.0	Good morning, this is Cardinal Francis George, and I invite you to join me for the next few minutes to reflect with Father Robert Baron on the Word of God, which is the Word on Fire.
0:11.0	Father Baron will challenge us to open our hearts to the Word on Fire, which is God's Word of Love for each of us.
0:18.0	If our hearts are open, the Lord can change and transform us, so that we might speak with love about the one who is love.
0:26.0	The Archdiocese of Chicago through the generosity of Sacred Heart Parish in Winetka now presents the Word on Fire.
0:34.0	Peace be with you. Friends, our Gospel today is taken from the very end of the Gospel of John.
0:42.0	It's always a privilege to read or to comment upon or to meditate upon the Gospel of John, because it is so rich.
0:50.0	We're dealing here not just with a great spiritual master, we're dealing to with a great literary artist.
0:56.0	What John paints for us in his scenes are icons.
1:01.0	He paints a kind of sacred picture of the Church of Christ of the Spiritual Life, and what he does is he carefully points out to us various aspects of this picture.
1:13.0	What we have today in this beautiful account of the appearance of Jesus by the seashore is an icon not only of Jesus, but an icon of the Church.
1:23.0	What I want to do is run through the sort of thicket of symbols and images that are part of this literary icon that St. John paints for us.
1:35.0	Here's how he begins.
1:38.0	Jesus revealed himself in this way.
1:41.0	Together we're Simon Peter, Thomas called Dittimus, Nathaniel from Cana in Galilee, Zebedee's sons, and two other of his disciples.
1:51.0	Simon Peter said to them, I'm going fishing. They said to him, we also will come with you.
1:59.0	Now here it's a very simple picture, but actually symbolic is quite complex.
2:03.0	Whenever you have the disciples in a boat, especially with Peter in the lead, we have an image of the Church.
2:11.0	This is the bark of Peter, this is the ark of salvation.
2:15.0	They're on the lake, they're making their way across. This is the Church now making its way through time and space.
2:23.0	Beautiful detail, and St. John never is casual about numbers.
2:27.0	Numbers always have a symbolic significance.
2:30.0	There are seven people in the boat.
	...

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