The vocation to public service should be so all-encompassing, he said, that lawmakers should even remember when they were called. The prophet Isaiah, he said, dated his call to the prophetic vocation to "the year King Uzziah died," Barron said, citing the Book of Isaiah in the Bible.
"In other words, it was burned into his memory because it was the defining moment of life," Barron said, before asking lawmakers "what was, for you, the 'year Uzziah died'?"
There are three transcendentals that culture is based upon, Barron said, the "true," the "good" and the "beautiful." Politics, he said, is especially connected to the "good."
Barron exhorted members of Congress "to find it, to fight for it, to propagate it."
"What animates that work?" he asked rhetorically of the pursuit of the "good" of those in public service. "It's a passion of justice that lies at the bottom of the soul," he said.
God called those in public service through a desire for justice, he said, emphasizing the need for "bringing our lives into harmony with the integrity and beauty of that call" where "everything I do is about serving justice."
That, he warned, might make members "unpopular," "less rich," or see them "attacked." However, he added, "The way you measure life now is how you respond to this call."
Barron also mentioned the rise of the "Nones," or those unaffiliated with any religion. Pew Research numbers the other week showed that the "Nones" now make up 26 percent of the overall U.S. population.
"Are we losing a sense of the sacred and divine dimension of life? I think demonstrably yes," Barron said.
Matt Hadro was the political editor at Catholic News Agency through October 2021. He previously worked as CNA senior D.C. correspondent and as a press secretary for U.S. Congressman Chris Smith.