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, we come today to this feast of the baptism of the Lord.

This is exceptionally important because all four Gospels talk about the baptism of Jesus.

John the Baptist is a kind of door we have to go through to understand Jesus properly.

What I'm going to do in this sermon, even though our reading today is from the Gospel of Luke,

is range around a bit among all these different accounts of the baptism because it matters that much.

Here's the first thing I want to observe about it. The baptism of Jesus was

an embarrassment. No way around that. Here's the first Christians writing about the Messiah,

...