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 and we enter now

friends into this holy season of land. You know these past several weeks I've

been rereading Fulton Sheen's great masterpiece I think is best book called The

Life of Christ and I'm doing it as my spiritual reading while I do my

office and the book is as you know it's remarkable in any number ways but what's

most struck me upon revisiting it is the stress that Sheen consistently and

insistently places on the sacrifice of the cross. That was the one thing that

Jesus was about. He came to do and speak many things of course but the primary

thing he came to do was to die to give his life for the salvation of the world.

Again and again Sheen will say that though he taught much Jesus was not

primarily a teacher though he did miraculous things he was not primarily a

wonder worker. He was first and foremost what John the Baptist said the Lamb of

God who came to take away the sins of the world. It's the master idea the

organizing idea around which everything else revolves. Well Fulton Sheen brings

this idea to bear in a famous chapter called Three Short Cuts from the Cross

and I want to focus on it because this is our gospel for this opening Sunday of

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