Does God Punish Us? | Bishop Barron

I want to focus this week on the second reading, which is from the marvelous Letter to the Hebrews. It addresses a very important and very controversial topic—namely, the divine punishment. You would be hard-pressed to say that this is not a motif in the Bible. That’s simply not the case; in fact, it’s a rather major motif. How do we make sense of this theme of divine punishment without falling back into a terrible view of God as an arbitrary, capricious tyrant? This little passage from Hebrews gives us the interpretive key.

Mass Readings:
First Reading — Isaiah 66:18-21
Psalm — Psalm 117:1, 2
Second Reading — Hebrews 12:5-7, 11-13
Gospel — John 14:6