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 and 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 great feast day of epiphany and I

would like to take this opportunity to talk about a phenomenon that's very

prevalent today. Namely the option for spirituality rather than the

faith. This tension between spirituality and faith. You can see it if you start

looking almost everywhere. Look at the recent work of Eckhart Tolla, the man

whom Oprah strongly recommended. I think I spoke a few months ago about his

book. He sees the particular religions as divisive and finally unnecessary.

What underlies all of them is a basic set of spiritual convictions and

intuitions. When we grasp and follow them we are spiritually awakened and we

don't fall victim to the arrogance of particular traditions of revelation

that claim to be absolute. We're spiritual rather than religious in fact

that's better for us. You might remember about oh twenty years ago the

comparative mythologist Joseph Campbell gave a series of interviews to Bill

Moyers and he made pretty much the same argument. It's much better to follow this

fundamental spiritual intuition behind all the religions than to cling to any

...