This is Father Robert Barron. Friends, I invite you to reflect with me on the word of God, which is the word on fire.

Word on fire Catholic Ministries is a non-for-profit apostolate dedicated to the mission of evangelization.

We utilize media both old and new to share the faith on every continent and to facilitate an encounter with Christ and His Church.

Through our efforts, we hope to take the gospel out into the peripheries of the culture, where the transformative power of God's Word is most needed.

Let us open our hearts to the word on fire, which is God's Word of Love for each one of us.

If our hearts are open, the Lord can change and transform us, so that we might share the warmth and light of Jesus Christ, who is the Word on fire.

The global benefactors of Word on fire with the support of the arts dices of Chicago now present Word on fire.

Peace be with you. Friends, we come to this great feast day of epiphany.

And I would like to take this opportunity to talk about a phenomenon that is very prevalent today, namely the option for spirituality rather than the faith.

This tension between spirituality and faith. You can see it if you start looking almost everywhere.

Look at the recent work of Eckhart Tolla, the man whom Oprah strongly recommended. I think I spoke a few months ago about his book.

He sees the particular religions as divisive and finally unnecessary.

What underlies all of them is a basic set of spiritual convictions and intuitions.

When we grasp and follow them, we are spiritually awakened.

And we don't fall victim to the arrogance of particular traditions of revelation that claim to be absolute.

We're spiritual rather than religious. In fact, that's better for us.

You might remember about, oh, 20 years ago, the comparative mythologist Joseph Campbell gave a series of interviews to Bill Moyers and he made pretty much the same argument.

It's much better to follow this fundamental spiritual intuition behind all the religions than to cling to any particular religion.

Versions of this theory can be found in the 19th century in the work of James Fraser wrote a book called The Golden Bound.

Many humanists of the Renaissance make a similar argument.

I would say many people today, if their religious at all, would rather be identified as seekers rather than believers.

They're independent spiritual operators rather than members of a church. They're spiritual rather than religious.

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