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, for this third Sunday of ordinary time,

we have a couple readings that are a little weird.

What I mean is there's a section of them that's weird, that's odd,

and I bet most preachers, myself included, skip over these sections to get to the kind of better known, more understandable parts.

But I want to dwell on purpose, on the strange part.

The first reading now from the prophet Isaiah and then the gospel reading from Matthew.

Listen now what Isaiah says.

First, the Lord degraded the land of Zebulan, the land of

Naftali, but in the end, he's glorified the seaward robe, the land west of the Jordan, the district

of the Gentiles. You say, okay, I guess, I don't know really what any of that means.

And we kind of skip over that to get to the better known parts about a people who walked in darkness have seen a great light.

...