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, our first reading for this weekend is from the marvelous

book of wisdom and the problem is it might easily slip past our minds but

God shouldn't because it articulates what is arguably the principle of

biblical revelation. What I mean is the primacy of grace. Let me say that again.

The central principle in the whole Bible is the primacy of grace. As I've said

before, the Bible is not the story of our quest for God. Go to any bookstore.

Go on the spirituality shelves. You'll find a hundred books about the human quest

for God. Bible isn't that story. It's the story of God's quest for us. It is God

who always takes the initiative in the spiritual order. It's God who sets the

tone. It's God who's always the master of the conversation. You know, there's a

great temptation in all of us sinners to turn God into a distant spiritual

force or principle. And then we're striving to find our way to that God. Or we

turn God into a difficult moral taskmaster. And only through heroic effort can

we sufficiently impress him. We see the problem with both those approaches is

it puts us and our achievements in the forefront. It's my heroic climbing of

...