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. You know

for something that I find really puzzling, whatever people say in a

Christianity, ordinary old-fashioned, everyday old Christianity. The one thing

Christianity is not is run-of-the-mill or ordinary. In fact I'm gonna go out

with him and say something here. There is no religious figure anywhere in the

religions or philosophies of the world, none, who is stranger and more

demanding, more relentless and more unnerving than Jesus. Let's say that again.

There is no guru, teacher, founder, nobody who's as strange and relentless as

Jesus and therefore the religion attached to Jesus is the strangest of them all.

Now I'm gonna put exhibit A to you today and it's from our gospel Matthew chapter 10.

Jesus says to his apostles, listen, whoever loves father or mother more than me is not worthy of me.

Whoever loves son or daughter more than me is not worthy of me. Okay, let me get this

so the most intense loves that we have, the love of a child for parents, the love for your

mother, your father, or turn around, the love of a parent for a child, maybe that's even more

intense, the connection that a father will feel for a daughter or a son, the mother's

intensity of love for her children, having mind you both the kind of internal quality and an

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