Good morning, this is Cardinal Francis George, and I invite you to join me for the next few minutes to reflect with Father Robert Baron on the Word of God, which is the Word on Fire.

Father Baron will challenge us to open our hearts to the Word on Fire, which is God's Word of Love for each of us.

If our hearts are open, the Lord can change and transform us, who we might speak with love about the one who is love.

The Archdiocese of Chicago through the generosity of Sacred Heart Parishing Winnetka now presents the Word on Fire.

Peace be with you. Friends, today our reading suggests a theme that I think we have not talked about enough in recent years.

I mean the theme of Providence, that God cares for us in a very specific concrete way, that God guides and directs our lives.

You know, I found in the course of my pastoral ministry that this is a theological theme that really touches people deeply.

People sense it, they know it, they assume it and rely on it, that God is providential, yet I found when we talk about God sometimes, our language becomes much more abstract and distant.

So I haven't got to exist, okay, but God's kind of a celestial CEO at best. He's not going to bother himself with particular concerns of my life.

Or God is a distant cosmic power, maybe got the universe going, but he's not worried about what's happening to me today.

But I'd say this, from beginning to end of the Bible, from Genesis to Revelation, this theme is taken for granted.

It's everywhere in the Bible. God's providence is not distant and God's not a cosmic force. God is the one who holds us in the palm of his hand.

Remember in Psalm 139, Asama says, oh Lord, you search me and you know me. You know my resting and my rising. You discern my purpose from afar.

Before ever a thought is in my mind, Lord, you know it through and through. Behind and before you besiege me, your hand ever laid upon me.

Now that's strong language that God knows us inside and out. He knows our coming and our going.

He knows everything happening to us, every word on our lips and in our minds.

That's the biblical vision, I would say, of God's providence. Now our first reading for this Sunday is a magnificent image of this divine providence from the book of the prophet Isaiah.

Low, I will spread prosperity over Jerusalem like a river and the wealth of the nations like an overflowing torrent. Listen now, as nurslings, you shall be carried in her arms and fondled in her lap.

As a mother comforts her child, so will I comfort you. In Jerusalem, you shall find your comfort.

That's a powerful image, isn't it? We are imagine now as a little child like a toddler or even an infant in her mother's lap, caressed and fed and cared for and comforted.

Think of the way a mother cares for like a newborn child.

I can't care of everything. This child is utterly dependent, but there is the mother providing providence, providing for all the child's needs.

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