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 and 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 Baron, as he preaches

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

Peace be with you. Friends, I want to focus on our second reading for this weekend. It's

taken from the eighth chapter of Paul's Great Letter to the Romans, and it gives me the

opportunity to talk about one of the most important and spiritually powerful books in

the entire scripture. Can I urge everybody listening to me? At some point this week, take

out your Bibles and find Paul's Letter to the Romans. It's right after the Acts of

the Apostles and the New Testament. Read through it. It's one of the first great texts of theology

in the whole Christian tradition. In many ways, all of theology is kind of a footnote

to Paul, and this is Paul's greatest letter. My conviction is that no Christian should

be unaware of what St. Paul wrote to the little church of Rome in the mid-first century.

I think about that for a second. Paul didn't found the church of Rome. When it came to Rome,

we're not sure, but pretty early, Christians had established themselves in the imperial

capital, and Paul was very interested in coming to visit, which eventually he did, because

of course he comes to Rome and he dies in Rome in the Neural persecution in the year 64.

But he's very interested when he writes the letter in establishing contact with this church

in the capital of the world. We're pretty sure, the scholars are pretty sure, that he wrote

the letter to the Romans in Corinth. So there's a church that Paul did found in that Greek

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