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, on the second Sunday of Easter we commence a reading

now for the rest of the Easter season of the Book of Revelation. So it's the

second reading for the rest of the Easter season. So I want to take advantage of

this opportunity to talk in a sustained way about this great book, a book that

has fascinated Christians and non-Christians for the past two thousand years.

It's the final book of the Bible and that's of course interesting isn't it?

Because you know at one point the Bible was compiled. In all these texts that

were floating around, both the Hebrew texts and the Greek texts, and at a certain

point the church can't own eyes them. It just means the church put them in a

particular order and it put the book of Revelation last. Now anybody with a

literary sensibility knows that what comes last in a poem or an epic or a novel

or a play is of great importance. Very often the beginning, you know, think of

Moby Dick, call me Ishmael, the opening line often will tell you a lot about

the story, but the way the story or the play ends is of extraordinary significance.

So the church decided very early on the entire biblical revelation would end

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