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 now to the fourth Sunday of Lent and I mentioned before that readings are so

rich for Lent they always are and we're meant to have kind of a heightened

attention as we attend to these and And the reading for today, the Gospel, is one of the most famous

text in the Bible. In fact, less so now, but when I was coming of age, you saw it all the time

at sporting events and all that that people would hold up a sign

St. John 316 and the reference is to a line from the gospel today

namely for God so love the world, he gave his only son so that everyone who believes

in him might not perish but might have eternal life.

Now you see why people have held that up, because in many ways it's the gospel in miniature.

If someone were to ask but what's Christianity all about and you had one verse from New

Testament?

That's not a bad candidate to point to. God so love the world he gave

his only son so that everyone who believes in him might not perish but might have eternal life.

Okay, I'm going to get there, but I want to attend to what's right before it.

And I think in many ways we can isolate that phrase too much,

and we miss the real import of it because we don't

attend to what happens right before. It's the famous speech to Nicodemus you

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