This is Cardinal Francis George. I invite you to join me for the next two minutes to reflect

with Father Robert Barron on the Word of God, which is the Word on Fire. Word on Fire Catholic

Ministries is a non-profit ministry at the forefront of Catholic evangelization, using

new media to spread the faith and every continent. Father Barron challenges 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 so that we might speak with love about the one who

is love. The global benefactors of Word on Fire with the support of the Archdiocese of

Chicago now present Word on Fire. Peace be with you. Friends, at the climax of Dante's

inferno, Virgil and Dante come to the very pit of hell and there they confront Satan.

He's a giant figure in Dante's imagination, endowed with wings so massive that they

remind the poet of a windmill. But Satan is not surrounded by fire as we might expect.

He's surrounded indeed encased by ice. He flaps his wings, his great wings like a bat,

which is unable to move. And all he does is weep. I've always felt that's a splendid

portrait of sin. There's nothing glamorous about sin, nothing cool or life affirming about

it. To turn, listen out, to turn from the source of life, God, is to dry up spiritually

and psychologically. St. Augustine defines sin as being incervatus in say caved in around

oneself. Dante Satan is a perfect exemplification of that definition, isn't it? Satan is caved

in around himself encased in the ice of his own egotism and self-regard. See, friends,

God has made us for movement. I don't just mean physical movement. I mean, he's made us for

a journey outside of the self and into the world in its fullness, into beauty and truth,

intelligibility, goodness, relationship, insight, the quest for justice, et cetera, et cetera.

God wants us to fly. He wants us to move. Think of sin, therefore, as a lack of movement,

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