Welcome back to the Word on Fire show. We're just a few days away from Christmas. We're so excited to be with you.

I'm Brandon Vat, the content director at Word on Fire. And with us is Bishop Robert Barron, the auxiliary bishop of Los Angeles. Bishop Barron, welcome.

Hey Brandon, always great to be with you.

You as well. Now we're just a few days removed from a trip that we took, along with a few other people from Word on Fire, up to New York City.

And therefore, a few different events. The first one was the premiere of your pivotal players film series at the Sheen Center. Talk about this.

Yeah, it was a thrill. I had heard about the Sheen Center. It was just established a couple of years ago.

It's sort of a center for arts and culture, but under the sponsorship of the church and named, of course, for our great hero, Fulton Sheen, who was a pioneer in this whole area of communication.

I always thought the Sheen Center actually was up near the cathedral, like somewhere in Midtown Manhattan. But in fact, it's right in the heart of the kind of the funky Greenwich Village down in what I call Bob Dylan country.

So as I was walking around on there, I saw Fourth Street and Bleaker Street and these streets that were made famous by some of the songs.

And that's where the Sheen Center is. And it's a converted, I think it was a shelter for homeless for a time. And I think before that, it was a parish facility.

Anyway, now it's kind of this cool, funky arts sort of building with theaters and stages and rehearsal rooms. And it's kind of a gathering place for the artistic community.

And they have premieres and they have readings and they have lectures and performances. So it was neat. And we showed the entire Michelangelo episode of our new series there to a crowd in their big theater.

And then afterwards I did a little kind of Q&A with the crowd and with a member of the staff. So it was exciting. I like the Sheen Center.

We had a great time there. Then afterwards our good friends, John and Catherine Strauss invited us over to their house. I know they listened to the show. So we'll give them a generous shout out. We're so grateful for that.

The next day though, we went to St. Patrick's Cathedral where you preached a homily. And then we had a little reception afterward. Tell us about that.

Yeah, what a day. I was I was staying at Cardinal Dolan's house. He lives right behind St. Patrick's and he appeared in his chapel Sunday morning. I had not seen him on Saturday at all because we were busy all day.

And so we prayed morning prayer, kind of in silence together. And then we had a good 45 minute conversation over breakfast. And we got caught up. And he's been a great friend and supporter of mine and we're on fire for long time.

It was wonderful. Then I went over and you know whenever I go there to preach, it's just a thrill. I gave the Trey Oray talk some years ago. Those are talks on on Good Friday. And the cathedral was filled then.

But it was all under scaffolding. The last all about five years now they've been working on that cathedral. So it was just covered up and it was kind of disappointing to get up there the other day and look out at this now gleamingly bright and clean restored cathedral.

So I was filled with 3000 people was just delightful and I'm up in the pulpit that full of machine preach from so it was you know one of those great ones for the permanent memory banks.

And then yeah, afterwards we had a little reception for some potential donors to help us with the second half of pivotal players. But it's always a joy. I don't know if I want to live in New York, but I love visiting New York.

I always find it exciting and.

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