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 one of us.

Peace be with you. Friends, we come today to one of my favorite feasts of the

year, the feast of epiphany. Epiphany from a Greek word meaning intense

appearance. Phanane means to appear in Greek and epi which means on top of is a

way of intensifying. Remember I talked before about in the our father we have the

little phrase taun arton taun epi uzion and it means super substantial bread.

Epi uzion. So epi phanane means something that's appeared but in a very

intense way. Not just getting our attention but revealing something of

enormous significance. That's what epiphany is about. For the wise men of course

it was first the star that was this extraordinary appearance but he much more

than that. At the point of the story is it wasn't the star that was a real

epiphany. It was this baby. They went looking for a king and they find this little

child. That was the epiphany that was the extraordinary appearance. Whenever we

come to this feast day I think of James Joyce, the great 20th century Irish

novelist, a man who was certainly formed in Catholic thought. Abandoned the

church but I think his parents say he never really left Catholicism. It just

...