Robert Barron
Bishop Robert Emmet Barron is an acclaimed author, speaker, and theologian. He is the former Francis Cardinal George Professor of Faith and Culture at Mundelein Seminary near Chicago and also is the founder of Word On Fire (www.WordOnFire.org).
Bishop Barron is the creator and host of CATHOLICISM, a groundbreaking ten-part documentary series and study program about the Catholic faith. He is a passionate student of art, architecture, music and history, which he calls upon throughout his global travels in the making of the documentary.
Word On Fire programs are broadcast regularly on WGN America, Relevant Radio, CatholicTV, EWTN, the popular Word on Fire YouTube Channel, and the Word on Fire website, which offers daily blogs, articles, commentaries, and over ten years of weekly sermon podcasts. In 2010, Father Barron was the first priest to have a national show on a secular television network since the 1950s.
Fr. Barron received his Masters Degree in Philosophy from the Catholic University of America in Washington DC in 1982 and his doctorate in Sacred Theology from the Institut Catholique in 1992. He was ordained to the priesthood in 1986 and has been a professor of systematic theology at the nation's largest Catholic seminary, the University of St. Mary of the Lake/Mundelein Seminary since 1992. He was visiting professor at the University of Notre Dame in 2002 and at the Pontifical University of St. Thomas Aquinas in 2007. He was also twice scholar in residence at the Pontifical North American College at the Vatican.
In addition, Fr. Barron lectures extensively in the United States and abroad. Cardinal Francis George calls Fr. Barron “one of the Church’s best messengers.
Fr. Barron was baptized at Queen of All Saints Basilica in Chicago and grew up at St. John of the Cross parish in Western Springs, Illinois.
WordOnFire.org - Fr. Barron's website launched in 1999 and currently draws over 1 million visitors a year from every continent. Fr. Barron posts weekly video clips, commentaries and radio sermons and offers an audio archive of over 500 homilies. Podcasts of his sermons are widely used by tens of thousands of visitors each month.
TV - EWTN (The Eternal Word Television Network) and CatholicTV broadcasts Fr. Barron's DVDs to a worldwide audience of over 150 million people.
Radio - Since 1999, Fr. Barron's weekly Word on Fire program has been broadcast in Chicago (WGN) and throughout the country (Relevant Radio - 950 AM Chicago) to 28 million listeners in 17 states. Fr. Barron also is a regular commentator on the "Busted Halo Show" on the Sirius satellite radio network based in New York.
DVDs - Fr. Barron's DVDs are used as powerful faith formation tools in universities, schools, churches and homes around the country. The series includes Seven Deadly Sins, Seven Lively Virtues; Faith Clips; Conversion: Following the Call of Christ; and Untold Blessing: Three Paths to Holiness.
YouTube - With over 180 online video commentaries by Fr. Barron, over 1 million viewers worldwide have made him the most popular of any evangelist on YouTube. These frequent, high-quality productions include brief and lively theological reviews of contemporary culture, including movies such as No Country for Old Men, Apocalypto, and The Departed, a three-part critical review of Christopher Hitchen's book God is Not Great, The Discovery Channel's The Jesus Tomb, the HBO series "The Sopranos", "Rome" and more.
Missions - MISSION CHICAGO features evangelization lectures by Fr. Barron at the behest of Cardinal George. These special missions and presentations throughout the Archdiocese are centered in downtown Chicago and attract business, civic, and cultural leaders.
Books - His numerous books and essays serve as critical educational and inspirational tools for seminarians, priests, parishioners and young people worldwide. His published works are also central to the numerous retreats, workshop and talks that h
“Meek - free from the addiction to ordinary power - you can become a conduit of true divine power to the world.”
“One of the most fundamental problems in the spiritual order is that we sense within ourselves the hunger for God, but we attempt to satisfy it with some created good that is less than God. Thomas Aquinas said that the four typical substitutes for God are wealth, pleasure, power, and honor. Sensing the void within, we attempt to fill it up with some combination of these four things, but only by emptying out the self in love can we make the space for God to fill us. The classical tradition referred to this errant desire as "concupiscence," but I believe that we could neatly express the same idea with the more contemporary term "addiction." When we try to satisfy the hunger for God with something less than God, we will naturally be frustrated, and then in our frustration, we will convince ourselves that we need more of that finite good, so we will struggle to achieve it, only to find ourselves again, necessarily, dissatisfied. At this point, a sort of spiritual panic sets in, and we can find ourselves turning obsessively around this creaturely good that can never in principle make us happy.”
“Who had the biggest army in the ancient world? Caesar Augustus in Rome, and that is precisely how he was able to dominate that world. Nevertheless, his army is nothing compared to this angelic stratias that has lined up behind the new emperor. Remember Isaiah's prophesy that Yahweh would one day bare his mighty arm before all the nations. N.T. Wright has magnificently observed that the prophecy finds its fulfillment in the tiny arm of the baby Jesus coming out of his manger-crib.”
“But the true emperor, Luke insists, is not the one who feeds himself but who is willing to offer his life as food for the other. At the climax of his life, this child, come of age, would say to his friends, "This is my body, which will be given for you' do this in memory of me" (Lk 22:19).”
“But the true emperor, Luke is telling us, arrives vulnerable and exposed, because the good life is not about the protection of the ego, but rather about the willingness to become open to the other in love.”
“Adam, we hear, walked in easy fellowship with God in the cool of the evening and spoke to him as to a friend. This ordering of Adam to God meant that our first parent was effortlessly caught up in adoration. The term "adoration" comes from the Latin ado ratio, which in turn is derived from "ad ora" (to the mouth). To adore, therefore, is to be mouth to mouth with God, properly aligned to the divine source, breathing in God's life. When one is in the stance of adoration, the whole of one's life - mind, will, emotions, imagination, sexuality - becomes ordered and harmonized, much as the elements of a rose window arrange themselves musically around a central point.”