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 want

to concentrate this week on our second reading which is a very brief but very

punchy passage from Paul's magnificent letter to the Romans. It comes at the very

end of chapter 11 which completes a major section of the letter in which the

Apostle considers Israel in relation to the Church. Keep in mind Paul was a

Jew, thoroughly trained in the ways and police of his people, utterly devoted to

Israel's identity and mission. But then he received the revelation of Christ and

he knew he had to think things through again. How to make sense of the

ancient Jewish tradition in light of the dying and rising of Jesus and to make

the thing really point it, here's what he's wrestling with. How to understand

Gentiles, so Greeks and Romans, coming to the faith when salvation was supposed

to come through the Jews, many of whom in fact were rejecting the Christian faith.

So for a Jew who's now become a follower of Jesus, this is a point of some

confusion. And so Paul spends three entire chapters of Romans wrestling with

this. So if you want the details of that conversation pick up your Bibles and

look at Romans 9, 10 and 11. But my focus today in the sermon is not so much that

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