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, we come today to the fourth and final Sunday of

Advent and appropriately so as we're just getting ready for Christmas we come

to a very important spiritual point. The Bible and the spirituality that is

flowed from it have always been subversive. I mean that literally they turn

everything upside down and I mean this in many senses but there's one manner of

subversion that I think is particularly important and it comes through in the

readings for today. The Bible turns upside down the way we

customarily think about the God-human relationship. What do I mean? Well in

almost every other religion or philosophy and I mean East and West you know

across the ages. God or the gods are powerful forces who have to be

supplicated, begged, prayed to sacrifice to in order for human beings to get

what they want. Again think of religions all over the world and you'll find a

similar dynamic. God or the gods are kind of distant, they're a little difficult,

they're reluctant and we have to strive mildly to get them to give us what we

want. So if we pray hard enough, if we're morally good enough, if we show our

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