This is Cardinal Francis George. I invite you to join me for the next few 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, today is the feast of the baptism of the Lord, and I want to

bring this feast together with last week's feast of the epiphany. Both of them speak

in powerful ways to this issue of the relationship between Christianity and the other great religions

of the world. If you heard me last week, you recall, I said with regard to this question,

there are two great extremes to be avoided. On the one hand, a sort of exclusiveism or

maximalism that simply says, we're right and they're wrong. We're the fullness of revelation,

we're at best pseudo-religions, and I argue that we, for all kinds of reasons, that that

simply is untenable. We have too much in common with the other great religions of the world.

We can't simply dismiss them. We'd be dismissing ourselves.

At the same time, I argued, there's another extreme position. Call it a radical minimalism

and inclusivism. This one says, hey, what difference does it make? There are a lot of different

religions, but they're all basically the same. They all come down to the same basic truths,

we're all just climbing the sacred mountain by different paths. Well, that one too is deeply

problematic, and I want to say today why I think that view is a problem. But then I want to conclude

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