This is Cardinal Francis George, and I invite you to join me for the next few minutes to reflect

with Father Robert Barron on the Word of God, which is the Word on Fire. Father Barron will

challenge 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,

clearly might speak with love about the one who is love. The Archdiocese of Chicago through

the generosity of Sacred Heart Parishing Lynette that now presents the Word on Fire.

Please be with you. Friends, medieval scholars said that the human being is a kind of

microcosm. What they meant was in us you can see in a certain way the whole of the cosmos

because we contain in ourselves both the spiritual and the physical. It is though the angelic

and the animal meet in us and they said that's the glory of humanity. That's a point of pride

that we bring together these two great elements of the cosmos. I think we can see pretty easily

that they're right, that we combine these two often conflicting qualities. The Sama said,

Lord, you've made us little less than a God with glory and honor you crowned us. That's true,

isn't it? In our spiritual powers, we can soar with the soliloquies of Shakespeare.

We can take in the melodies of Mozart, the symphonies of Beethoven. We can build high level computers.

We can design machines that fly through the galaxies. We can lose ourselves in the contemplative

ecstasy of prayer. In all these ways, we are like angels. We're like spirits. We tend upward.

But at the same time, whether we like it or not, we're animals, we human beings. We got these

grubby and wonderful bodies. I can sit in my chair at night and read a book. Read a book of

Aristotle or Plato or Thomas Aquinas. I can be totally enraptured in the book, soaring with these

glorious angelic ideas. Then I get hungry. Then I get thirsty. Then I get too high or too cold.

I'm reminded vividly of this body and its demands. Even as I'm soaring with the angels,

...