This is Cardinal Francis George. I invite you to join me for the next two minutes to reflect

with Father Robert Barron on the Word of God, which is the Word on Fire. Word on Fire Catholic

Ministries is a non-profit ministry at the forefront of Catholic evangelization, using

new media to spread the faith and every continent. Father Barron challenges us to open our hearts

to the Word on Fire, which is God's Word of Love for each of us. If our hearts are open,

the Lord can change and transform us so that we might speak with love about the one who

is love. The global benefactors of Word on Fire with the support of the Archdiocese of

Chicago now present Word on Fire. Peace be with you. Friends, I realize it's a paradox,

but the more we understand the biblical writings in their own context, the more relevant they

become to us. For too long, I think, preachers and teachers have succumbed to the temptation to make

the readings immediately applicable to our time and our consciousness without understanding what

they meant in their own time and what they meant to the first audience that heard them. But

actually, the more we do that, strangely, the more relevant they become to us. The readings

for today, I think, are a very good example of this principle. Our first reading is from the

prophet Baruch. Baruch, you remember, was a kind of secretary to the prophet Jeremiah. Jeremiah

and Baruch lived at the most disastrous period in Israelite history. The time of the Babylonian

exile. Now, you might pretend to say, well, wasn't the captivity in Egypt the worst period? I would

say no. I think what haunts the Old Testament imagination most is this terrible period when the

Babylonians swept through Judea, killing many. They laid seeds to Jerusalem and then destroyed

the city, burned down the temple to the ground, and then carried off the elite of the nation into

slavery. I've said before, think of September 11th times a hundred to get some sense of what this

meant for Old Testament Jews. They're chosen people, God's special people. Jerusalem was David's

...