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, I

love how the readings for this second Sunday of land awaken a sense of

wonder. A sense of a world beyond our own. If I can put it this way a mystical

consciousness. So in the first reading dramatic beautiful memorable strange

Abraham and X the ritual by which the Lord establishes a covenant with him. How

important, of course, that theme is. But this covenant is accompanied by all

sorts of mystical symbols. First of all, the mountain, the deep terrifying

darkness, the flaming torch, the voice from heaven. Those are all mystical

symbols. And see, they're signaling something that Abraham is not making just a

regular old contract the way he would with a fellow human being. He's making a

covenant with this this strange and baguiling and amazing and overwhelming

figure of God. He's dealing with something that he cannot control and he knows

it. Something from a realm that's beyond this world. And then in the second

reading, St. Paul talks about our citizenship in heaven. It's interesting, isn't

it, because Paul as a Jew, but was also a Roman citizen. So he was aware of a kind

of if you want dual citizenship. And he's telling the first Christians here that

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