Good morning, 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 and Winetka now presents the word on fire.

Peace be with you. Friends, today we come to the holiest week of the year, this Palm Sunday or Passion Sunday.

We begin our meditation on Jesus' journey into His Passion and to His Cross.

Paul said, I preach one thing, Christ and Him crucified. Here we come to the holiest time of the year, because here we come to that one thing.

What the incarnation was about, Jesus coming to the cross, nailing our sins to the cross, that He might save us.

The church proposes, as you know, on Palm Sunday, a reading of the Passion Narrative from Matthew, Mark, or Luke, this year it's from Luke.

One theologian said that the gospels really are Passion Narratives with long introductions. That means that what they're really all about are these beautiful narratives, these beautiful stories of how Jesus comes to His cross and resurrection.

So what I want to do today is spend some time meditating, especially on Luke's version of the Passion that we read for this cycle of Lent.

What's the momentum of the incarnation? So God's own Son, God's own Word, becomes flesh. His momentum is a downward momentum.

By which I mean, His purpose is to bring from heaven, God's love and God's compassion and God's power, especially to those people and places that are far from it.

His purpose is not like the Greek enrollment, God's to remain up transcendent at their own realm, but rather to come down, down into all those dark places that are far from God's love and God's grace.

And so you remember at the beginning of Jesus' public ministry, he stands shoulder to shoulder with sinners in the muddy waters of the Jordan, in that shocking and scandalous scene, and it did scandalize the first Christians.

Because why would Jesus, the sinless one, seek a baptism of repentance, of forgiveness? And yet there he is shoulder to shoulder with us sinners. That's why he's come. He's come to go down into our condition and to share it.

Remember when he was accused of eating and drinking with sinners and tax collectors? Jesus said, look, I've come not for those who are healthy, I've come for the sick, not for the righteous, but for sinners.

He's a healer of souls and so the momentum of the incarnation is downward into our fallen and dark and painful and sinful human condition.

Christians, it's this momentum that carries him all the way to the cross, because what is the darkest place? What do we fear the most?

Death itself, and so that's where the Son of God has to go. Death broods over much of human life. We're so afraid of it that it turns us inward on ourselves, and that in turn produces sin.

Augustine knew that somehow the fear of death is what conditioned sin. Therefore that's where Jesus had to go in order to free us from sin.

The passion narrative is this terrible and awful account of how Jesus goes down to this darkest of places.

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