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 of us.

Peace be with you. Friends, we've come to this great, but I think so often misunderstood,

feast of the ascension of the Lord.

I have a feeling that a lot of Christians kind of pass over this feast.

You know, they think, okay, Easter, I get that, Christmas, I understand that, the ascension of the Lord,

so Jesus goes up into the sky and goes away. I think most Christians just kind of turn away

from this feast. As I say, far too often we think of it as this time when Jesus left us.

So off he goes. Do you know, the depictions you'll often see in classical

stained glass of the ascension is the, you know, the puzzled disciples looking up and there's a cloud

and then two little feet coming out of the cloud because up Jesus goes and he's gone, you know,

and that we hope one fine day he'll come back, but, you know, for the

moment, he's kind of left us. Well, to think this way is to miss much of the point of the New

Testament. We've had this privilege throughout the Easter season of reading from the Acts of the Apostles,

and I've been urging you to take out your Bibles and just read through it.

You can't do it at one sitting, but, you know, it's not that long.

And it's a wonderful book if you want to get kind of oriented to the Bible.

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