This is Cardinal Francis George. I invite you to join me for the next two 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 nonprofit ministry at the forefront of Catholic evangelization

using new media to spread the faith and 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 second reading for this climactic fourth Sunday of Advent

are the opening lines of one of the most important documents in the history of the West.

I'm talking about St. Paul's letter to the Romans. So we hear the opening lines and I'm going

to argue that if some ways the whole of Paul's gospel can be distilled from these lines,

they function sort of like the overture of an opera where you hear the great themes of the

whole opera signaled in the opening of minutes. Paul wrote this famous letter to the Romans,

sometime in the late 50s of the first century scholars. Most likely, interestingly in the city

of Corinth, to which of course he wrote two famous letters. But while he was staying in Corinth,

he probably wrote the letter to the Romans. At the time of the writing, Paul had never been

the Rome. Of course, he ends his life there. But when he wrote the letter, he had not been there.

It's one of the rare occasions actually where Paul writes a letter to a church that he had not found.

Usually Paul founded the church, got it going, and then went on his way, and then wrote letters

back to it. That's true of the letter to the Philippians and the Corinthians, etc. But Rome he had

never been to. But he knew there was a Christian church there, which in itself I find

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