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. We

come to the great feast of the ascension of the Lord. Now right at the end of

the Easter season in anticipation of Pentecost and I'll explain that

connection. I love this feast and I think we should do a little theological

reflection on it because it's key to understanding the dynamics of the

Christian life. Now how shouldn't we understand the ascension of the Lord as

though he's gone up and away. You know so the ascension means that Jesus is

gone up into the sky and now he's far away somewhere. So you think about that

image of the sky or the heavens or up there. Well that's not really any

different than this world. It's just another element of space and time but the

Bible and the great tradition use the sky or what's up there or the clouds to

symbolize the properly transcendent. I mean that which goes beyond our

ordinary world of space and time, our ordinary experience is the realm that's

proper to God. So for example we speak about God being eternal. We don't mean

that God just goes on and on. That's like a vampire to live forever. That's not

what we mean. Eternity is to be outside of time. It's to be above time. We speak

...