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, I mentioned last week that we're reading during these last weeks

of the Easter season from the final chapters, the Clothes of the Book of Revelation, which

is the last book of the Scriptures. And I said that the great story, which the Bible tells,

and the Bible is not just arbitrarily thrown together, it's telling a story, the narrative is emerging,

and the great story is coming to its climax. After the discussion of a new heavens and a new

earth, that was last week, we have today the presentation of the arrival of the Holy City,

the new Jerusalem. John the visionary sees it coming down from heaven as a sort of gift.

From heaven to earth comes this great gift of the heavenly city. Now, there's a massively

important point that must be stressed, I think, right away here. Notice, please, we're not talking

about people escaping up to heaven, but rather as something coming down from heaven to take

its place on the earth. Plato might have dreamed of an extraterrestrial salvation, an escape from the

terrors and limitations of this lowly world into a purely spiritual realm. That's true, that's

Plato's sense of salvation, that we're stuck in a kind of prison, and the idea is a jailbreak.

Many mystics of a more gnostic stripe have followed the great philosopher in this regard. That's

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