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, our first reading for the Sunday is one of my

favorites. It's from the book of Exodus and it's about a battle between Israel

and the Amalakites. And you say, well, that's of maybe mild interest to

specialists historians of the ancient world or on the flip side. You'll say,

that's why I don't like the Bible. The Bible is all about these wars and at the

end of the story Moses and the Israelites put the Amalakites all to the

sword. So either this is an ancient irrelevancy or it's kind of an outrage.

Well, can I suggest it's neither one of those. And to help us see that I would

draw attention not to any contemporary biblical scholar, but to a very ancient

figure, origin of Alexandria lived in the late second early third century. So a

long time ago and he proposed a way of reading this kind of text. I think is

still of great relevance to us. It shows why it's not just about some ancient

pointless battle, nor is it about some kind of gruesome God performing

genocide on people. How does the origin read this kind of story? The battle of

Israel against its enemies. He sees Israel as evocative of all of God's power in

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