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, our first reading for this weekend is taken from

that wonderful middle section of the prophet Isaiah. I think I told you before

Isaiah is divided by the scholars into three sections one through 39 they call it

Proto or First Isaiah and then a 40 through 55 this middle section

sometimes called Dudro or Second Isaiah then some even say from 55 to 66

Trito or Third Isaiah. I'll leave that to the Bible scholars but the point is

that central section is full of some of the richest theology in the whole

Old Testament and the passage for today that the church gives us conveys an

extremely important spiritual point and one that I think we rarely avert to but

I think it's especially today I'm going to suggest of tremendous importance.

So everyone knows that in the Bible Israel is the specially chosen people of

God of all the nations of the world God chose Israel to be His special

priestly and prophetic people right but do we attend sufficiently to the fact

that biblical revelation does not begin with the formation of the people Israel.

You could say that begins in Genesis chapter 12 with the call of Abram

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