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 friends it is Palm Sunday and we have the great privilege on Palm Sunday to read every year

one of the passion narratives, and this year we're reading from the Gospel of Marx, so we read

Marx, and the extraordinary thing is, Marx is the very first one written and there's a famous statement

made by 20th century theologian that the Gospels are basically passion narratives with long introductions.

So in a way, the passion narrative

is the whole of the gospel.

So there's so much we can say about them.

What I want to do today, some of a little bit different,

instead of putting the focus on Jesus,

I want to focus on a series of people around him

as they react in different ways

to the events of the passion.

Kind of putting ourselves in the scene, do we identify with any of these people as they react to Jesus as he comes toward his death.

Here's really how the passion narrative opens up.

It's the woman with the alabaster jar of perfume.

Remember the scene where she breaks open this jar of very expensive perfume

and then she pours it on Jesus' head and it scandalizes people around.

I say, well, wait a minute, I mean, that's very expensive.

...