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, today is

the second Sunday of Easter, divine, mercy Sunday. So designated by Saint John

Paul the second, not long before he died. As a young man, Carl Voityua cultivated

devotion to Sister Faustina Kowalska, a young nun who died in Krakow in 1938,

had been gifted with extraordinary visions and experiences of the Lord Jesus. I

the privilege when I was filming over in Krakow to visit the convict where

Faustina was and to see actually not far from the quarry where the young John

Paul the second worked. So I was able to look into that world a bit.

The most famous of the visions that Faustina had of Jesus was of the Lord

revealing His sacred heart from which came rays of light red and white. What she

interpreted as a radiating fourth of the divine mercy. The pale light, the white

light, signified baptism and the red light signified the Eucharist, the blood of

the Eucharist. Now, it struck young Carl Voityua and eventually John Paul the

second as significant that Faustina died on the eve of Poland's crucifixion at

the hands of the Nazis who invaded September 1, 1939, the year after she died.

And then the ongoing crucifixion of the Poles by the Communists. John Paul as we

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