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 and a very happy, very blessed Easter to everybody.

So we come to the climax of the church's year, we come to the feast to feast, we come

to the very reason for being of Christianity.

St Paul said if the Lord's not been raised, our faith is in vain and so everything in Christian life centers around the resurrection.

And the church gives us every year marvelously the passage from the Gospel of John, the account of Easter

morning, and there's so much here, everybody.

I want to bring out this one feature that John especially draws attention to.

So we hear about Mary Magdalen, right, who had this great friendship with the Lord Jesus.

She comes early in the morning, it's still dark.

That's Johannine symbolism for sin and for death

and for not understanding, all of that.

She notices the great stone has been rolled back and so right away she suspects that it's been a grave robbery.

I mean who would go to the effort of rolling the stone back? Why else would you do it?

So right away she runs to Simon Peter and the other disciples and says

they've taken the Lord from the tomb. We don't know where they put him. So it's the dark.

She's still operating within a conventional framework if you want.

Trying to understand what she's seen in light of what she's already known.

Then this scene, the two disciples having heard this they're they're alarmed I'm sure they're also

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