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

have today this wonderful feast of the Holy Family. We have a lot of people

telling us what makes a family integrated, psychologically healthy, but what's

interesting about today is we look into the mystery of what makes a family

holy. And the church gives us now our first reading, that wonderful wonderful

story about Hannah. You'll find it in the first book of Samuel. I might urge

people who've been away from the Bible for a while. Take out first Samuel. Read

just the first, you know, a couple of chapters. You'll find this, this really

beautiful story, but it's more than just a beautiful story. It tells us a very

deep truth about what makes a family holy. So we're told the man named Elkana and

his two wives, Penina and Hannah. Now the former had given him lots of children

and the latter Hannah remained childless. So on a regular basis, the family went

up to worship the Lord at the temple in Shiloh. Now this is way before we have

the Jerusalem temple that was built by David's son Solomon, but at the time the

Ark of the Covenant was kept in the temple of Shiloh. So up they went and Hannah

on a regular basis would beg the Lord, beg the Lord for a child. Now though she

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