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

Word on Fire Catholic Ministries is a non-profit ministry at the forefront of Catholic evangelization, using new media to spread the faith on every continent.

Father Barron challenges 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 global benefactors of Word on Fire,

with the support of the Archdiocese of Chicago,

now present, Word on Fire.

Peace be with you.

Friends, our gospel for today is one of the strangest and most shocking of the parables of Jesus, as reported in the gospel of Matthew.

It has to do with the king who gives a wedding party for his son, invites people to come,

and then they find all these excuses for not coming.

And the king responds with a sort of extraordinary anger, and he kills them and burns down their city.

And then when he invites people from the hedgerows to come in, this poor man shows up with

his wedding garment, the king upbraids him, and throws him out into the darkness.

So people wonder what in the world this parable can mean.

Many devout believers find the brutality and

violence of the story hard to take. I mean, I get it. The king might have been insulted and

hurt that people didn't respond to the invitation, but does that give them the warrant to

kill them and then burn down their city? So I understand people's reticence about this,

they're concerned. And then the poor guy at the end, who is invited and finds himself without the

wedding garment and is thrown out into the darkness, well, we just begin to wonder about the

sanity of this king.

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