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 and 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 of us.

Peace be with you. Friends, our gospel for this weekend is one of the really great stories

in the New Testament. One of my favorite gospels and one that was very important to Carl

VIII-1. Hope John Paul II. I used his baptismal name there on purpose because he considered

this gospel when he was a professor of moral philosophy, when he was a father that

should professor Carl VIII-1, but he also used it when he was a pope. Most famously in his great

encyclical, very topical splendor, I've said many times before, if you want to read one text by

John Paul II, I'd read that one. I think it's the greatest of his encyclicals. It's on the moral

life and he begins with a detailed analysis of this great story of Jesus encounter with the

rich young man. For John Paul, for Carl VIII-1, the essence of the Christian moral life can be

discerned from this story. How so? Well, there are three major themes that he asks us to attend to

and I'll make these the focus of the homily today. Three features of the Christian moral life

that become real queer in this story. Here's first one. There is a deep and abiding hunger in

every one of us for eternal life. Now, we have a lot of hungers for different things. We have

hungers for success. We have hunger for money. We have hunger for pleasure, etc., etc. All those

things are fine, but underneath all of them, beyond all of them, through all of them, there is

this abiding hunger, which is the hunger for God, for the eternal, for some good and truth and beauty

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