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 and 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 Baron as he preaches

the gospel and shares the warmth and light of Christ with each of us.

Peace be with you. Friends, I realize the entirety of our second reading for this weekend

might be seen as just, I don't know, so much boilerplate, throw away lines that a writer

would use at the commencement of his letter, something like just a formal salutation.

But in point of fact, almost the whole of Christianity is contained in these lines if we have

but the eyes to see. I'm talking about the opening of the first letter that St. Paul

wrote to the little Christian church in Corinth, a church that he had personally founded,

and that at the time might have numbered, oh I don't know, maybe in the dozens if that.

I'm always struck when I read these Paul line letters and did he have any idea how thoroughly

and massively these letters of his would echo up and down the ages, how civilization shaping

they would be. He sent them to these little communities. They were probably read aloud

by one of the, apparently few people who knew how to read. Did he have any idea that 2000

years later, halfway across the world on a continent that he didn't even know about,

we would be reading the salutation that he wrote. Anyway, let's look at it step by step.

He commences Paul. Well we notice it's a Roman name, Paulus, significant because Paul was

a Roman citizen and he was eager to move about the Roman Empire. I mean that was his evangelical

missionary of place. At the same time, it represents a sea change in him at the most fundamental

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