United States Conference of Catholic Bishops video screengrab / YouTube
During a keynote address to US young pilgrims gathered in Rome, Bishop Robert Barron of Winona-Rochester, Minnesota, exhorted young people to go out on the adventure that God is calling each of them to, rather than remain in the “cramped space” of what they think is possible for their lives.
“God is calling us now up and out to a higher life,” Bishop Barron said. “To be a person of faith is to accept that call and to place one’s will within the higher will of God.”
Speaking in the Basilica of St. Paul Outside the Walls July 30, Bishop Barron said he was particularly struck by words he once read by theologian Hans Urs von Balthasar, who said, “You don’t know who you are until you find your mission.”
Bishop Barron noted that the mission differs from person to person depending on what God’s will is for them in their life, and it is found by listening to God’s voice and worshipping Him.
“I can be defined in lots of ways, but I don’t really know who I am until I’ve found my mission,” Bishop Barron said. “What is it? Whom do you worship, what voice do you listen to, and what’s the mission that voice is giving you? I don’t know in detail, that’s as particular as everybody in this room, but it’ll look something like a path toward greater self-gift; greater letting go.”
“Yes, think of the crucified Jesus, even to the point of giving one’s life away in love. It’ll look something like that. Now, each one of you has got to discern that,” he said, emphatically adding: “But there is nothing more important in your life than that. Listen to the voice; worship aright; accept the mission.”
To excessively focus on oneself and attempt to define one’s life based on subjective, individual notions will not lead to flourishing, according to the bishop. He described such a worldview as not only boring, but harmful.
“When fallen people do what they think is right in their own eyes, things fall apart,” he said. “The Bible tells an entirely different story — not the story of self justification and ‘my rights and my freedom and my choice’ — no, no, nothing as dull as that. In fact, bore me to death with that, ‘I live in my own little space, my own little cramped space of what I can understand, what I can choose.’”
Scripture, Bishop Barron said, “tells the story of a great adventure of being called up out of one’s preoccupation; called to a higher life, summoned by God. That’s the adventure of the spiritual life.”
“Don’t ever let them tell you that religious people are kind of dull, stay-at-home types, not all that interesting,” he added. “On the contrary, it seems to me, religion at its best is always a summons to adventure.”
Life becomes “rich and wonderful,” he said, when people are summoned above the focus of self, preoccupations, and self-wants.
Bishop Barron spoke about the biblical figures of Abraham, Jacob, and Jonah, noting that their stories give insights to how God calls people to walk in faith, worship Him alone, and let go of one’s own will so as to go out on mission.
The bishop warned against making someone or something — including money, education, and even family — more important than God.
“If you make anyone or anything less than God into God, you’ll fall apart,” he said. “And you’ll sow disorder around you.”
He noted that God does not need human praise or affirmation. Rather, human persons can only flourish if they praise God.
“We need to praise God, because in that great act, angels ascend and descend,” Bishop Barron said. “In other words, I find a point of contact with the sacred, and my life now becomes integrated, and I sow greater integration around me. The saints are people that know Whom to worship, they’re set toward God, and that’s why they become on fire.”
Speaking about how Jonah tried to run away from the difficult task God was asking him to do, Bishop Barron cautioned against resisting God’s call, noting that such a refusal not only affects the individual, but those around them.
“How often does God give people an easy mission in the Bible? Like, never,” Bishop Barron said with a short laugh, later adding: “God always gives us a difficult mission, why? Because He is summoning us up out of ourselves to the heights, He wants us to get out of shallow waters [and] into the depths.”
Jonah encounters a storm while he is at sea traveling the opposite direction of the city God called him to go to. Bishop Barron noted there are similarities to this situation and the faithful’s lives today.
“Fellow sinners, we hear the mission, we know what it is, we know the call to radical love, radical self-gift, but we tend to go the other way. Now what happens? Storms,” he said. Such a result is not God being vindictive, but rather, it is “spiritual physics,” the bishop said.
“When you go against the Divine call, storms kick up in you and around you,” Bishop Barron said. “Refusing your mission is bad for you and bad for people around you, because you were meant to help them in some way. How do you read the storms in your own life? It could be the result of your resisting the mission you’re supposed to be on. How do you sometimes read the sufferings of those around you? Is it because you’re refusing to be the saint God wants you to be?”
He urged the young people to find their mission and follow it, and encouraged them to be adventurous rather than preoccupied, as the culture often is, with staying “safe.”
“I’m not against safety, we all need a modicum of safety to function,” Bishop Barron said, “but a religion that puts before our eyes, on a regular basis, a Man pinned to a cross is not a religion putting a high priority on safety. Look at these great stories in the Bible, from Abraham to Jacob to Jonah to all the prophets coming up to Peter and Paul and all the rest of them: They’re not putting a high priority on safety. No, no — they’re interested in adventure.”
“They’re interested in being summoned out beyond themselves,” he concluded. “That’s the same goal I think that Peter and Paul and the Lord Jesus Himself, that’s the same call they’re giving to all of you.”
After Bishop Barron’s address, the young pilgrims in the Basilica prayed a Holy Hour, adoring Jesus in the Eucharist.