Welcome back to the Word on Fire show.

I'm your host, Matthew Petrusik.

For the next few weeks, we'll be walking through Bishop Barron's lecture series on one

of the most important Catholic theologians of the 20th century, Hans Orr's von Balthasar,

with the goal of understanding the man,

his theology, and his ongoing impact on the church and our work to evangelize the culture.

Enjoy.

I am delighted to be sharing with you these 12 lectures on Hans Uers von Baldassarre, who is one of the most

intriguing, strange, and influential

Catholic theologians of the 20th century. And I bet word on fire people, as you watch these

presentations, you'll say, oh, that's where he got that thing from the priority of Christ. Or,

oh, now I understand why he wrote that in, and now I see, or maybe,

oh, that's in episode six of the Catholicism series, because I was very deeply influenced by

the thought of Ors van Balthazar, and he did really seep very deeply into my mind and heart.

I'll tell exactly how I came to know him. I got to go back to the spring of

1986. I'm at St. Mine Red Arch Abbey in Indiana. I'm on my retreat preparing for priestly

ordination. I was there with a friend who had gone to St. Mine Red for college. He said,

look, during this week,

you have to meet Father Guy. He was talking about Father Guy Mancini, who's still there,

still a monk and a teacher at St. Minerit. And so one evening, we went over to Father Guy's office.

And it was, you know, book lined and I'm a, you know, bibliophile. So I was looking and I said, oh, I see a lot of your books of Carl Ronner. Now, go back to around that time,

anyone who is studying theology seriously, we all read Ronner. He was the go-to person.

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