Word on Fire is brought to you by Catholic cemeteries, serving the Chicago area since 1837.

This is Cardinal Francis George, and I invite you to join me for the next few minutes to reflect with Father Robert Baron on the Word of God, which is the Word on Fire.

Father Baron will challenge 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, who we might speak with love about the one who is love.

The Archdiocese of Chicago through the generosity of Sacred Heart Parish in Winetka now presents the Word on Fire.

Peace be with you. Friends about mid-November, Cardinal George, my boss, stopped me at a function up at Mundeline Seminary where I teach.

He said, I've got a job for you. It's always a bit frightening by the way when the Cardinal tells you that.

He said, I want you to take a quarter off from your responsibilities at the seminary and work on jump-starting evangelization in the Archdiocese of Chicago.

I said, what does that mean? He said, I don't know, but we'll find out together.

So these past couple months, I've been working full-time on this evangelization project trying to revitalize, re-energize this work of bringing the Lord Jesus to the people of Cook and Lake Counties.

Now I know this work and even this word evangelization can seem somewhat alien to Catholics.

You know, we do, of course, prayer and liturgy and social justice and the mass and so on, but evangelization isn't that something that the Protestants do, more precisely the evangelicals?

And let's face it, aren't we often a little bit put off by the in-your-face style of evangelists, evangelical preachers and so on?

Well, here's the bottom line. We Catholics cannot avoid the demand to evangelize, to proclaim the faith.

Vatican II could not be clearer on this score. Vatican II saw the church as a vehicle for evangelization. That's the church's job. That's the essential mission.

Everything we do in the church, from liturgy to prayer, eucharist, care for the poor, the corporal and spiritual works, all of it is centered ultimately on evangelizing on proclaiming Christ.

In fact, here's a way someone summed up Vatican II's understanding of the church. It's not true to say the church has a mission.

Much sure to say the mission has a church. The mission to proclaim Jesus Christ, the vehicle for that is the church.

Pope Paul VI couldn't have been clearer on this score, making it central to his magisterium. And, of course, John Paul II, throughout his lengthy papacy, made evangelization absolutely central, famously calling for a new evangelization.

To use new methods, not to be afraid to use the media, for example. In fact, the work I've been doing the past five years being on the radio is a direct response to the call of John Paul II to evangelize in a new way.

This is the central task of the church. Not one task among many, not something the Protestants do, it's something we must be about.

Now, do we need to evangelize? The statistics here could not be clearer. Did you know that in your parish, somewhere between 70 and 80% of the registered Catholics don't attend Mass on a regular basis?

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