Lenten radio talks call listeners to turn their hearts toward God

Father Robert Barron is a theology professor at St. Mary of the Lake University of Mundelein Seminary. The following is a short summary of the first of his six radio talks that will air during Lent:

For Father Robert Barron, Catholicism is more than a philosophy. It is a way of life, a way of seeing the world. For Barron, it’s embodied in Chartres Cathedral and in Mother Teresa of Calcutta, in the poetry of Dante and the social work of Dorothy Day, in the complexity of St. Thomas Aquinas and the simplicity of St. Therese of Lisieux.

And, Barron says, Catholicism is beautiful.

He will share his vision and his faith with listeners in the Chicago area in a series of radio talks this Lent. The talks are based on the readings for each of the six Sundays of Lent, but they aim to do more than explain the readings. They aim to take listeners on a journey through the roots of Christian faith.

Jesus does not want people admiring him from a distance, Barron says. Jesus wants people living in him, so Barron’s purpose —and, he says, the purpose of all Christian preaching and proclamation—is transformation and conversion.

“I think the ordinary goal of the Christian life is to be a saint,” Barron says in his first talk, to air March 8 and March 12. “That may seem like the occupation of only a few people in the course of Christian history. Well, no—that’s the ordinary goal of the Christian life. Holiness. Sanctity.”

And the place to start is with Jesus’ call to conversion, or a change of heart and soul, which comes in the Gospel for the first Sunday of Lent.
The Gospel reading gives us the first words out of Jesus’ mouth in Mark’s Gospel, the first of the Gospels to be written. The words are: “The time of fulfillment is now. The kingdom of God is close at hand. Repent. Reform your lives and believe the good news.”

When Jesus says this, Barron says, he is like a novelist or poet, signaling the meaning of his whole work in the opening line. They serve as a wake-up call to Jesus’ listeners, and they tell people what they must do.

And to repent and reform your life, Barron says, means to put Christ at the center of it, just as Christ was at the center of the stained glass rose windows in Gothic cathedrals. For with Christ at the center of your life, everything else will fall into place.

BACK