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, I'm going to be blunt with you. The gospel for today is

really tough. It's really challenging but I love how it cuts right to the heart

of the kind of ethical implications of the gospel. Now you see what I mean as I

go on here. I think one of the great temptations today is to make Jesus just

you know one more option in the great smorkest board of religious options.

So there's you know this prophet, there's this teacher, there's this guru,

there's Jesus, there's this philosopher and I take a little bit from here a

little bit from there that might be our post-modern culture. It ain't the Bible.

It ain't the New Testament. There's something of a be-all-end-all quality about

Jesus, something of an either or precisely because the claim he makes about

himself, not one teacher among many, but the one who speaks and acts in the very

person of the God of Israel. Therefore when it comes to Jesus as he says you're

either with me or you're against me, you either gather with me or you scatter.

Now what follows from this everybody, this is the ethical principle. What follows from

this is what I call the principle of detachment and clarification of motives.

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