Word on Fire is brought to you by Catholic cemeteries, serving the Chicago area since 1837.

This is Cardinal Francis George, and I invite you to join me for the next few minutes to reflect with Father Robert Baron on the Word of God, which is the Word on Fire.

Father Baron 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 so that we might speak with love about the One who is Love.

The Archdiocese of Chicago through the generosity of Sacred Heart Parish in Winnicka now presents the Word on Fire.

Peace be with you. Friends, ancient peoples hated traveling by sea. That's how they got a fair generalization.

They were, for very good reason, frightened of the deaths, especially given the rather primitive state of transport in those days.

Even the best boats were by our standards pretty primitive. Most even experienced sailors hugged the shore whenever they could.

They wouldn't venture out into the deep water.

Therefore, it's not too surprising that when biblical people wanted to conjure up their deepest anxieties, the most terrible spiritual and psychological states, they would speak of the roaring and untamed sea.

They'd just frighten them.

So for example, in the book of Genesis, we hear of the, in that beautiful Hebrew phrase, the Tohuva Bohu, the primal, unformed chaos, out of which God draws creation.

Think of it as like the dark ocean depths.

We hear, of course, in the book of Exodus of that frightening red sea which blocks the Israelite escape from Egypt, the red sea through which they have to walk.

And in all four of the gospels, there's a version of the story at the heart of our gospel for today, the storm at sea.

Carl Bart, the great Protestant theologian, said, the stormy waters in all these biblical accounts stand for Dastnichtiger, that's his German phrase.

It just means the nothing, the nothing.

All those powers that are opposed to God's creative intentions, all those difficulties both interior and exterior, both physical and psychological that beset us, all the darkness that surrounds us in life, Dastnichtiger, the nothing, the stormy waters, the Tohuva Bohu.

Well, that's where the disciples are in this story.

I've often told you that the disciples in the boat stand for the church, the bark of Peter, making its way through life, stormy waters, the waves crashing against the boat, the winds whipping around them.

There's symbolic of everything that besets the church up and down the centuries, all the ways that Dastnichtiger, the nothing, opposes and threatens the church.

You know what's interesting in this story, I think, is this storm must have been fierce, because these were experienced fishermen.

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