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 now to the holy season of Lent, one of the

most important periods of the liturgical year. During Lent the church asks us to

do three things. It's really activity oriented. We're asked to pray to fast and to

give alms. What I want to do in this sermon today is just say something simple

about each of those three essential Lent and activities to pray to fast and to

give alms. So first of all prayer. I always love John of Damascus' definition of

prayer. He says to pray is to raise the mind and the heart to God. To raise the

mind and the heart to God. Think of in the course of our day we're preoccupied

with so many different things, right? Our job, our family, are we achieving our

goals? Are we getting ahead? Why did that person insult me? Am I impressing that?

But we're obsessed with all these particulars and that's okay. But the

trouble is in that process we rarely raise our minds and hearts to God. Prayer is a

kind of friendship with God. It's cultivating a relationship with God. Not

leaving behind everything else in our lives. In fact, all of that should be

related to God. But prayer is explicitly tuning in to our friendship and

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