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, our Reigns for this weekend have a tremendous cohesiveness.

They all speak to a truth about our world that's hard to take in, that has to be repeated

to each generation of fresh. A truth that many older people have an easier time understanding

than young people. Here it is. Nothing in this world lasts. Everything in this world

eventually fades away, turns to dust, evenesthes. We hold everything here below temporarily.

The Psalmist says, our life is over like a sigh. He also says, it's like the grass that

flowers in the morning and by evening withers and fades. So listen now to our first reading.

The Book of Coheilith, older translations had it as the Book of Ecclesiastes. Here are

the famous lines. Vanity of vanities. All things are vanity. My Hebrew scholar friends

tell me that the Hebrew sense of that word that was translated here as vanity is actually

bubbles. It's good in the air, bubbles. Think how fleeting and fragile and delicate a bubble

is and how quickly it breaks. Even as you're admiring a bubble, maybe someone's blowing

a bubble out of that thing or it's coming up from the bathtub or something. You look at

it, how beautiful and how pristine and maybe there's a play of colors on it and you're

sort of fascinated. But then before you know it, within seconds, the bubble just, boop,

it's gone. So is the whole of life on earth. There's the point here. In the grand scheme

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