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 readings for this third Sunday of Easter provide

very important lessons, I think, in fundamental Christianity. What it really means

to be a Christian. They also function as a sort of masterclass in preaching. So

I think anybody interested in being a Christian, but especially anyone who is

involved in the preaching and teaching task. A lot to learn from these

these wonderful readings for the third Sunday of Easter. What I especially

notice is is this tension or this play between sin and grace. You know in the

proclamation of Christianity in the living of Christianity, there's this

tension between sin and grace and to get this tension wrong, to

emphasize unduly one side or the other produces a lot of mischief actually in

religion. So let's take a look now at the first reading. It's taken from the

third chapter of the Acts of the Apostles and it gives us access to one of the

first Christian sermons ever preached. So the setting is St. Peter and St. John

there in the temple precincts. They've just healed the crippled man and now the

crowd has gathered, et cetera, et cetera. And Peter begins to give what the

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