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, last

week I spoke to you about the breakdown of an old world and the arrival of a new.

When Jesus comes, all the fixed stars have to give way and something new has to

emerge. Well, we see I think a very interesting application of this

principle in our gospel for today for this second Sunday of Advent. St. Luke,

and again we'll be reading Luke all during this cycle C of liturgical readings.

Luke who was trained in the fine literary tradition of the Greek language.

Unlike for example Mark, St. Mark has a kind of rough and ready

Greek. He certainly would have learned Greek as a second or maybe third language.

But Luke was trained as a fine literary artist. And it was also endeavoring to

write a biography of Jesus in the accepted sense of the term at that time. So,

you know, our modern day biographies are different. But what Luke is doing in

his gospel is like what an ancient biographer would have done. Anyway, Luke

commences this section, our gospel for today, as one would expect a

literary informed ancient biographer to do it. What I mean is he invokes the most

significant cultural and political players of that time and place. So again,

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