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, our

first reading for this weekend is taken from the always fascinating first book of

Kings in the Old Testament. Could I urge you please when you have a chance this

week take out your Bibles and read the first book of Kings you can read it and

you know one sitting a couple of sittings maybe it's adventurous fascinating

full of rich theology so read first Kings but we're dealing at our liturgy with

the story of Elijah and his battle with the priests of Baal. So these are the

priests who represent the false gods and Elijah famously called them out and

he defeated them on Mount Carmel in the famous scene where they call upon

their gods and he calls upon the true God and and the true God answered the fire

and then Elijah kills all the priests of Baal. Well we pick up the story now in

the wake of that because Queen Jezebel who was herself an advocate of false

gods is angry and she sends her police and military after Elijah. So here's

Elijah he says look I'm the only prophet of Yahweh in the whole country I'm

one guy he just took on the religious establishment and then literally kill

them and now he's got the army and the police force of the Queen coming after him.

...