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 one of us.

Peace be with you. Friends, our readings for this week are very apocalyptic. They have to do with the end of time.

They have to do with the second coming of the Lord Jesus, the consummation of all things.

Again, this time of year, as the calendar year and the liturgical year come to a close, so the church asks us to reflect upon these dark but finely very illuminating and wonderful matters.

The second reading is from Paul's first letter to the Thessalonians, which is, I think I've told you before, the earliest Christian text we have.

Written by Paul sometime probably in the early 50s of the first century, 20 years before the first of the Gospels was written, the earliest of Paul's letters.

It gives us a wonderful snapshot of what life was like in these very, very primitive Christian communities.

Paul writes to them,

about the event that changed his life.

Paul saw the risen Jesus and it turned everything upside down, inside out.

It revolutionized him, his whole way of thinking, being, acting, everything changed.

And now he's writing to these Thessalonians about the faith, about life, about Christian thought in light of the resurrection.

Here's what he said,

For if we believe that Jesus died in rose, so too will God, through Jesus, bring with him those who will fall in asleep.

For the Lord himself, with a word of command, with the voice of an archangel will come down from heaven and the dead in Christ will rise first.

He's talking about what stands at the heart of the Christian faith.

In Jesus Christ risen from the dead, we hope to rise from the dead.

In Jesus Christ, raised to a new pitch of existence, Jesus living now in the very realm of the Father, we who cling to Him, we who have been baptized into Him, hope for a similar consummation.

In light of that, everything changes.

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