Podcast Episodes
Back to SearchChrist, and Him Crucified
Episode 449
Friends, this year, the Feast of the Exaltation of the Holy Cross falls on a Sunday, so we have the great privilege of reflecting a bit more deeply on this marvelous and, frankly, disconcerting and o…
Published on 10 hours ago
Are You Ready for Serious Discipleship?
Episode 448
Friends, for this Twenty-Third Sunday of Ordinary Time, we’re reading from the fourteenth chapter of Luke—and it is very serious spiritual business. A lot of us sinners are satisfied with a low-level…
Published on 1 week, 1 day ago
Don’t Play the Pride Game
Episode 447
Friends, for this Twenty-second Sunday of Ordinary Time, I want to talk to you about a very important theme—namely, pride and its antidote. I don’t know a spiritual teacher who doesn’t say that the f…
Published on 2 weeks ago
Does God Punish Us?
Episode 446
Friends, I want to focus this week on the second reading, which is from the marvelous Letter to the Hebrews. It addresses a very important and very controversial topic—namely, the divine punishment. …
Published on 3 weeks ago
Christ Came to Cast Fire Upon the Earth
Episode 445
Friends, the title of my ministry, Word on Fire, came from our Gospel for today. Jesus says to his disciples, “I have come to set the earth on fire, and how I wish it were already blazing!” This is n…
Published on 3 weeks, 6 days ago
What Is Faith?
Episode 444
Friends, on this Nineteenth Sunday of Ordinary Time, our second reading from the Letter to the Hebrews offers us a great biblical description of faith. I stand with Paul Tillich, the Protestant theol…
Published on 1 month ago
All Things Must Pass
Episode 443
Friends, George Harrison once sang, “All things must pass; all things must pass away.” Almost every major religious figure and philosopher the world over has intuited this great truth about our world…
Published on 1 month, 1 week ago
Lord, Teach Us to Pray
Episode 442
Friends, we have the great privilege this week of reading, in our Gospel, Luke’s account of the Lord’s Prayer. This is a very sacred moment: Jesus himself—not just a spiritual guru or someone we admi…
Published on 1 month, 2 weeks ago
Are You Anxious and Worried About Many Things?
Episode 441
Friends, on this Sixteenth Sunday of Ordinary Time, our Gospel is the Martha and Mary story, and in my years of preaching, I’ve found that it tends to bother people a lot. With the first reading abou…
Published on 1 month, 3 weeks ago
The Natural Law
Episode 440
Friends, in our first reading from the book of Deuteronomy this week, Moses says to the people, “For this command that I enjoin on you today is not too mysterious and remote for you. . . . No, it is …
Published on 2 months ago