Friends, welcome to Word on Fire Catholic Ministries.

Word on Fire is an apostolate dedicated to the mission of evangelization,

using media both old and new to share the faith on every continent

and to facilitate an encounter with Christ and his church.

The efforts of Word on Fire engage the culture and bring the transformative

power of God's Word where it is most needed. Today we invite you to join Bishop Robert Barron

as he preaches the gospel and shares the warmth and light of Christ with each of us.

Peace be with you.

Friends, our readings for this weekend feature two widows.

Widows were in biblical times especially vulnerable figures.

This is because there was no social service network.

There was no welfare system to care for those who had lost their means of economic support.

So in a society where women were not breadwinners in our sense,

widows, unless they had support from a wider family network, were extremely vulnerable.

That's why, by the way, the prophets talked so much about widows and orphans.

You know, God's great love for the widows and orphans, our need to care for them.

It's just their way of saying the least and the most threatened, the most

vulnerable. Well, in the first reading, we hear of the widow of Zarifeth and her confrontation

with the prophet Elijah. It's a great story, by the way. You find it in the first book of kings.

We're talking about the 9th century BC, a time when the wicked Ahab was the king of Israel,

and his idolatrous wife, Jezabel, was the queen.

During this period, a severe famine broke out.

...