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

readings for this fourth Sunday of Lent are really magnificent and they're all

about the most important theme there is which is the divine love. That's the great

theme of the Bible. The God is love and the readings are kind of a hymn of

praise to the divine love in its various modes. Let me just say this right off the

bat. One of the great mistakes we can make in the theological order is to

project onto God our way of being and our subjectivity. What I mean is this we

tend to fall in and out of love being now well-disposed, now ill-disposed, now

satisfied, now dissatisfied, now content, now angry, etc. We are fickle and

vacillating and unreliable in love but God is not like this way because God is

love as we hear. He's love right through. More to the point, God is eternal,

which implies that he never changes. Therefore God does not fall in and out of

emotional states. He doesn't change his mind. He doesn't love and then refuse to

love. I use a beautiful Old Testament term, as said in Hebrew means tender mercy.

Beautiful King James rendering of that. That's what God is. Period. Has said and

nothing but has said. But wait a minute you might say, doesn't that seem actually

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