Welcome to the Word on Fire Show. I'm Brandon Vat the host. Today, Bishop Aaron is not

with us in studio, so instead we're sharing with you his talk from the 2018 Los Angeles

Religious Education Congress. This talk was titled Catholicism and Beauty, and surveyed

much of the beautiful and literary artistic tradition of the Catholic Church up and down

the centuries. He covers everything from the poetry of Dante to the beauty of the medieval

Gothic cathedrals to modern writers like Paul Claudel, and he highlights how beauty has

served as an effective route of access to God. So this episode, we're going to play the

first half of his talk titled Catholicism and Beauty, and next week we'll cover the second

half. So sit back and enjoy the talk.

As always, a joy to be here at Congress. I remember it was many years ago, I gave the keynote

in this room, and it's just one of the great places I think in the Catholic Church today,

this place and this gathering. I'll tell you a little story. I was in Washington last

week for the USCCB meetings because now I'm chair of this committee on evangelization.

So they're all week in DC, and so I was telling someone about my itinerary coming up. I

said, well, I'm here until Thursday, and then I'm going to Congress, and they said, oh,

are you going to say something on the hill? I said, not that Congress, not on. I'm going

to say the LA Congress. My 20, well, 21st year, I've been coming here since 1997, pretty

much every year. It's always been, thank you. And a special joy now to be auxiliary bishop

of this great Church of Los Angeles. So just a thrill to be with you all. I know we probably

everyone's been talking about St. Patrick today on his feast day, but when I was doing

my prayers this morning, what was striking me was, you know, how much I owe to the faith

of my parents, past on Catholicism to me. And of course, they received it from their parents.

...