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 Baron as he preaches

the gospel and shares the warmth and light of Christ with each of us.

Peace be with you. Friends, today is New Year's Day, but on the Church's calendar it's

the solemnity of Mary, the Mother of God. And we have today a terrific passage from the

gospel of Luke. I want to highlight just three words from this gospel. Each one says something

essential about the spiritual life. The three words are haste, astonished and treasured, haste,

astonished and treasured. We hear first the shepherds went in haste to Bethlehem and found

Mary and Joseph and the baby lying in the manger. They heard a message from the angels and

they went quickly to do what the angels told them to do. This, of course, echoes something

a little bit earlier in Luke's gospel. Mary receives the enunciation from the angel and

then it says she went in haste to the hill country. This is basic to the Bible. Once you

know what it is that God wants you to do, once you receive that vocation, once the heavens

have opened and God's will for you becomes clear, then you must act. One of the central

tragedies in the spiritual life is we know what God wants and we don't do it. We know

what God wants, but we procrastinate, we doodle, we make excuses. All the great biblical figures

were sent, as said at the very often, in the Bible no one receives a vision of God without

the same time being sent, being given a mission. At their best Abraham, Moses, Isaiah, Jeremiah,

Ezekiel, Peter, Paul, all the rest of them, they go, they move, they act. Mary goes and haste.

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