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 come to this 17th Sunday in ordinary time, and we have a great

privilege because we're reading in our gospel, Luke's account of Jesus' great prayer. So the

disciples say, Lord, you know, teach us how to pray. And so Jesus himself tells them how to pray.

So it's a very sacred moment. And I think we should move into that space. We're not just asking a

guru or asking someone that we admire. We're asking the son of God. How do I pray? And, you know,

we become so familiar with the Our Father that I think we forget the spiritual

power of it. So what I want to do is just kind of walk through. And each of the evangelist

has a somewhat different take. And Luke's got a few distinctive features. But here's how it begins.

Jesus says, when you pray, say, Father, hallowed be your name.

So first of all, and again, I know we pray this prayer all the time, and so it just kind of runs

through our mind. But pause at that opening word, Father. God is power, yes, God is the first cause of all things. Yes, God is the sovereign master of the universe. Yes, all that's true.

But Jesus says now when you pray, when you invoke God, you don't begin with those titles. You begin with this very intimate title, Father.

Think of that relationship with your father,

the intimacy that's implied, the tenderness of it.

That's how we approach the creator of the entire cosmos.

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