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, when I was a doctoral student in Paris I had the

great opportunity to go to some of the principal museums at off time. You know

when the tourists weren't there when it wasn't busy I'd go to the Louvre, I'd

go to the Picasso Museum, the Rodin Museum. One of my favorites though was the

Muse d'Orsay which is one of the great impressionist collections in the world.

Well one of my favorite paintings in the Muse d'Orsay I used to stand there

and just stare at it. It's a huge canvas and it's called Romans during the

decadence. The artist is not a super well-known figure named Thomas Couture but

this painting would draw me in because it's this huge depiction of this wild Roman

revelry. So every form of you know pleasure seeking is going on. There's

there's of course conversation there but there's sexual embrace, there's food and

there's drink and there's revelry and every type of excess like this huge you

know orgy is going on. But at the dead center of the canvas staring right out at

the viewer. So all the other characters in the painting are kind of looking at

each other but the only one looking right out at the viewer is this young woman

...