Aug. 24, 2016

By Suzanne Pietropaoli
Staff writer

“The Church’s job is to produce saints!” says Bishop Robert Barron. And he is certainly doing his part.

The former seminary professor and rector is the author of 15 books, a popular media personality and speaker, founder of Word on Fire ministries as well as author of their study programs, and currently Auxiliary Bishop of Los Angeles’ Santa Barbara Pastoral Region.

On Sept. 25, Bishop Barron will keynote INSPIRE: Called to Love in Lake Placid. He spoke recently with the NCC about the message he will bring, the universal call to holiness, and the role of parishes in making people holy.

NCC: What will be the focus of your keynote address?
BISHOP BARRON:  I have been looking at different possibilities, but I think I will structure the talk around our common Baptismal identity. In that first sacrament, every person is baptized priest, prophet, and king. There are different types of vocations within that baptismal identity. But all vocations, all forms of the Christian life, come together in exemplifying those three fundamental dimensions of our identity as baptized Christians.

NCC: The subtext of the summit is the universal call to holiness. How would you explain that term?
BISHOP BARRON:  Everybody is called to intimacy with God, and to mission. It is the ordinary Christian life to live in deep friendship with God and to be sent on mission. That is the Biblical pattern: God calls people to friendship with himself, and then sends them on mission. Out of prayer always comes mission, and fidelity to the mission increases your holiness. That is not the preserve of a special group, but the call of every baptized person; it is truly universal. The mode of intimacy and the type of mission of course depend on a person’s state of life, as St. Francis DeSales points out. But whatever our specific vocation, God calls each of us to intimacy with Christ, and to mission.

NCC:  Who, for you, especially exemplifies this holiness to which all are called?
BISHOP BARRON:  Thomas Aquinas, of course, my great patron saint, who opened my mind to the truths of God. His effect on me has been deep and lasting; it helped make me a priest, and a strong advocate of serious Catholic formation.  When I was young, Thomas Merton was very important to me; his writings drew me into a life of prayer and contemplation. Dorothy Day is a great hero of mine, as is Flannery O’Connor—a model of a holy mind and a holy spirit. And of course I am a big fan of G.K. Chesterton and John Henry Newman.

NCC:  What encourages people toward holiness?
BISHOP BARRON:  Above all, prayer helps people toward holiness. Prayer is steady conversation with God. Human friendship cannot be cultivated apart from intimacy and conversation, and the same is true in our relationship with God. For Catholics, the Eucharist and other sacraments, as well as daily prayer, encourage holiness. So does fidelity to the mission, to doing what God tells you to do. This is important, even if what he asks is simple, or not what you wanted, or doesn’t fit into your career plans. I am a big fan of St. Therese of Lisieux, whose “little way” explains this perfectly: Don’t fuss about doing great things, but do small things every day with great love. Prayer, fidelity to the emission, and doing everything with great love will deepen your holiness.

NCC:  What distracts people from holiness?
BISHOP BARRON:  The call to holiness articulated by the Second Vatican Council has been largely unrealized. Secularism is more rampant now than it was 50 years ago. Ours is the age of what Charles Taylor calls “the buffered self,” one closed in on itself and having no deep contact with others and no sense of friendship with Christ. It is all about wealth, pleasure, power and the things of this world. This secularist ideology Is everywhere today, in every song and every movie and everything young people hear. Secularism is the enemy of holiness: you don’t pray to a God you don’t believe in; you are busy with your own mission, your own plans and desires; and you don’t do small things with great love because you are consumed by great selfishness.

NCC:  What is the role of parishes in fostering growth in holiness?
BISHOP BARRON:  The priest’s whole purpose is to make lay people holy, and the whole purpose of a parish is to be a center of holiness. So there are two things: are you fostering people in prayerful intimacy with Christ, and are you fostering their mission? At its heart, making people holy is the one thing that a priest has to do.  A parish priest should draw his people to prayer, and to Mass and the sacraments—and then inculcate a sense of mission and of their purpose in the wider world. If a parish is not a center of holiness, it has lost its identity. We have a crisis in the laity: 75% of Catholics stay away from Sunday Mass, and marriage and birth rates are plummeting. Many have accepted the dis-values of the world.  We haven’t begun to implement Vatican II’s call for the renewal of the laity - that intensification of love for God and for others that can transform the world.

NCC:  What inspires people to want to be holy?
BISHOP BARRON:  Saints! Saints inspire others to become saints, and it is the Church’s job to produce saints. The saint is someone who becomes luminous, who becomes compelling. Holiness is deeply attractive. That’s why saints have halos in pictures, to represent the light that comes from them - the light of God’s own love. That light is real.  I‘ve known super-holy people in my life and they have that quality, that deep attractiveness. People who truly live the life of holiness naturally draw others in.