Welcome back to the Word on Fire Show. I'm Matthew Petrusik, Senior Director of the Word on Fire Institute and the host of the Word on Fire Show. Thank you for joining us. As we continue the second half of a conversation from last year's Good News Conference in Orlando with Bishop Barron and Word on Fire CEO, Father Steve Grunow, we'll discover the ministry's patron saints as well as some of the lessons that Word on Fire has learned through its years of evangelization. We'll also take a look at Word on Fire's plans for the future. Here to discuss these with Fr. Steve Brunow in the last second half of the conversation is Bishop Robert Barron. You know, we do a lot of praying in the office, and frequently the prayers are concluded with asking for the intercession of some of our patrons, our patron saints. And the new employees are always fascinated by who and why these are the patrons of Word on Fire. The most famous is Thomas Aquinas. And tell how that came about. Well, I've told that story many times, but I'm a priest because of Thomas Aquinas. My Episcopal motto was taken from Thomas, non nesite domine, I'll have only you. It was a course I took as a freshman in high school at Fenwick High School outside Chicago and was introduced in a kind of simple way to Aquinas. But I can't understand it except as an expression of grace. It just lit a fire in my mind. And I went to the library and I took off the shelf one of Mortimer Adler's, the great book series, and it was a book on Thomas Aquinas. And I took it off the shelf and looked up these arguments for God's existence that I found really interesting. And that was the beginning of a long, long process that's never ended. led me first to intellectual investigation and then eventually to the gift of my life. I thought, well, if God exists and God's the supreme good, wouldn't I want to give my whole life to God? And so that became the kind of form for my vocation. And then most of my academic work has been done on Aquinas. So he's just been sort of the animating spirit of much of my life. So that's why Thomas. I think he chose you. I choose you. It was at a time when the church was kind of losing a sense of its great intellectual tradition. And I imagine, you know, Thomas Aquinas saying, okay, this is not going to stand. And so he inspired this, what were you, 13 or 14? Go look at Thomas Aquinas. but some this room might be old enough to remember this that uh you know i'm this kid i thomas aquinas i thought he was fascinating i didn't realize there was this culture war going on in the catholic church where thomas aquinas was well he's pre-conciliar he's the old-fashioned and i would go to some of the first people when i was interested in the priesthood i'm 17 years old and i'd say well it's because of you know thomas aquinas and thomas aquinas oh brother you know and I honestly was flabbergasted. Why are they against Thomas Aquinas? It was a weird time in the history of the church. And I do think there's something to that where there was, I don't know, there was a need, I think, for a deeper, more serious approach to religion. And that's why I, you know, my motto, stop dumbing down the faith. Thank you. So we're a beautiful religion, yes, but we're a smart religion. And we uglified ourselves and we dumbed ourselves down. Now, don't get me started. But I mean, in some ways, Word on Fire was a response to both those things. Bring back beauty and bring back the smarts of Catholicism. I should mention, I'm a year older than my brother. I was at Fenwick High School. I had the same class in Thomas Aquinas and nothing happened. I don't choose you. I was not chosen. You know, the other key patron saint, though, of Word on Fire is St. Therese of Lezou, and I want you to talk about where that came from, and I want you to talk about what I think is one of the strangest stories, the French train station and St. Therese. The German train station. German, sorry. Well, Therese, I have an interesting sort of history with her. I first read her in the seminary, The Story of a Soul. And to be honest with you, I didn't really like it that much when I read it. I thought it was kind of superficial. She seemed like kind of a neurotic young girl. And I didn't really care for it, to be honest with you. But then I get to France to do my doctoral studies. And with a couple of friends, we went out to Normandy to go to the beaches. Well, on the way home, Lisieux is not far from there. And we said well let stop in Lisieux you know so we did And you know looked around and her place and where she buried and kind of her home and then we all picked up some books while we were there The friend in question is Father Tom O'Connor, who's now a history professor at Maynooth in Ireland. And we were both getting our doctorate at the same time, and we both got these books on Therese. And we began to read, or I began to read the first time. You know, she lives this very short life. She dies at 24. She writes the story of a soul, which begins to have a little bit of an impact. But the really interesting thing about Therese was in about 10 years or so after her death, there were a flood of stories that came into this little convent about encounters with her. People that they met, she appeared to them or there was an encounter with someone that they realized, oh, that was Therese of Nassir. Look at the stories of World War I. There are hundreds of them. people encountering Therese. So anyway, on the way back from the Zer, we're on the train, and I'm reading all this, and Tom is reading all these stories, and we're like, eh, something. Wow, Therese of this year, you know. And so it's just kind of in our minds. Well, I would say it was maybe two months later, he and I were going to Tübingen in Germany. That's a great university town. Hegel taught there, for example. And we're going to Tübingen to see Tom's friend, Eamon Conway, who's now also a professor in Ireland. And Eamon was there studying theology, right? So we were going to go to Tübingen and stay with him. This is all pre-cell phone, pre-social media. So we just, there we are. We're on a train. The train is delayed several hours out of Paris. So we pull into Tübingen, Germany about 11 p.m., right? And it's kind of shady looking, a few weird people walking around. It's late. We're in this town we don't know much about. Neither one of us had very good German. and the plan was to go to the phone. Remember phones? And we had a phone number to call this guy, Eamon. So Tom calls him and gets this family. I had no idea who. He said, well, maybe I dial or you call him. So I dial a number. I get the same family. And they said, I kept saying, I would like to speak with Father. This is kind priest's house. This is not a priest's house. So we had the wrong number. So there we were, 11 o'clock p.m., tubing in Germany, weird train station, strange people walking around. And I turned to Tom and I said, what do we do now? So I turn away from him and suddenly right before me is this young girl, German girl with like, I can still see her with like reddish blonde hair, short cut hair. And she says, you two look like you're lost. and I said yes yes we are kind of lost and can you help us yeah what do you need and I said well maybe is there a hotel and oh yes there's a actually a nice one that's not far from here and uh I'll I'll call and I said oh wonderful thank you you know and so I stay with her at the phone and I'm saying you know my name and his name and two nights and two rooms and okay okay And then she goes, no, okay, you're all set. So with that, I turned to Tom, who's over here, and I said, she did it. We got two hotel rooms in this nice hotel and amazing. I turned back. She's gone. And this is, it's not as big as this room, but it was a big train station. And there were doors here and there. And I, where does she go? This is 11 o'clock at night. Where does she go? And so I turned back to Tom and he goes, it was the little flower. And it's still the best explanation I got for that train station. But it was that trip and that experience were kind of triggers for me then to go deeper into her life and writings. And then I completely got it. You know, I really understood Therese and that she is a great doctor of the church and of the spiritual life. So that was kind of a beginning of my, you know, kind of deeper involvement with her. But she's become a model to me of so many things in the spiritual order. So that's kind of where that... But also, as we undertake these great projects, particularly when we were doing the Catholicism series, if we ever needed something or something was starting to go wrong or something like that, Bishop Barron would be like, okay, little flower. and and and the odd thing was that we would if the problem would be solved or the money would appear or you know something missing would be found well let's let's talk about evangelization which is what what your project has been for for the length of word on fire after 25 years what what have you learned about evangelization you know what what works who is the audience Here's my first reaction to that, is stop underestimating the audience. All my life, growing up and then when I first started this thing was, oh, you know, no, no, that's too much. Oh, the people, they can't handle that. Oh that too high level I remember years ago I in the parish preaching and this guy came up to me He was a lawyer at this high parish rich guy lawyer And he said you know Father that homily was okay but I mean, come on, let's cut it with the million-dollar words and let's make this thing, you know. And I looked at him, I said, all right, I presume you went to law school. And he goes, yes. I presume you read serious studies like in law journals. Well, of course I did. And I presume you continue reading them. Well, yes, of course. I said, I presume that the doctors in this parish went to medical school and read high-level medical journals in biology. Well, yeah. I said, then why are we spoon-feeding religion to people? But it's such a weird instinct that we had in the church of, oh, no, no, dumb it down. Oh, no, no, they can't handle that. I think what Word on Fire has proven by its success is that the people of God like beautiful, smart Catholicism. And they can more than handle it. They love it. That's my cri de coeur when it comes to evangelization. Vatican II, Cardinal George said correctly, missionary council. It was all about go out boldly. Bring the lumen to the gentes, right? Bring the light to the world. But the church I grew up with, hand wringing, unsure, bickering with itself. I don't know, we better not. Plague on all that. I mean, I think that was a big mistake. So that's my, what I've learned from evangelism. I didn't mean for these questions to upset you. But I'm just wondering, other lessons of evangelization, you guys have been into it for 25 years at the highest level. And what are you able to glean about evangelization? it's absolutely urgent and necessity and necessary and if we don't do it no one else is going to do it or other people are going to do it terribly and we should take that very very seriously because just imagine a culture that has never heard the parable of the prodigal son imagine a culture that has never heard the parable of the rich man and Lazarus imagine a culture that has never heard the beatitudes or the sermon on the mouth imagine a culture in which the predominant population has no idea who Jesus is and what he did for us. Imagine that culture. The Catholic Church, Christians throughout the world, are meant to be the bearers of the gospel into the world. And you don't have to imagine so much what that culture that is bereft of the gospel looks like, because we're starting to live in it. and so that's why I said after many many years of this I'm more and more impressed by the urgency and necessity of evangelization it isn't something that we put down on the bottom of the list of the things the church should be doing it's the number one thing the church should be doing because you don't want less and less and less people knowing who Jesus is. You want more and more people knowing who Jesus is because that's how the culture changes and that's how the world changes for the better. Because as I said, you don't have to think so hard about imagining what the culture looks like without Christ. because it's happening all around us. I wanted to begin to wrap things up here a little bit by taking a look at the future at Word on Fire and what we've got planned. And, you know, we talked about ambitions earlier. We're biblical people, so we've got big ambitions. And, you know, they include trying to institutionalize Word on Fire, create, you know, kind of a permanent headquarters building for Word on Fire and the Word on Fire Institute, where Bishop has a vision of creating Word on Fire centers of evangelization around the country to aid parishes in the work that they are doing, trying to meet people where they are. You're talking about the earliest stages of creating something that could eventually turn into a university of some sort. But one of the things that we really focusing on in this 25th anniversary year is the establishment of a word on fire order of priests And we made considerable progress along those lines have some initial tacit approval from the Vatican to move forward with that But I'm wondering if you can talk about that initiative a little bit and what it would try to accomplish, what it would mean for Word on Fire. Well, for me, the basic inspiration is I don't want Word on Fire to end with me. You know, so Fulton Sheen's my great hero. Fulton Sheen did his wonderful work. But then when he passed from the scene, there wasn't really something that would take up the baton. In fact, that's part of what we complained about early on was, you know, what happened after Fulton Sheen. So I didn't want that. I thought, let's have something that would continue the charism. I thought, what's the best way to do that but to form an order of priests who would have the charism that I had at Word on Fire? you know a smart beautiful catholicism that uses the media in a creative way evangelizes the culture all of that charism so we're in the process right now i can't tell you too much but of recruiting some people some that that i've had in mind others who have come to me you know the tricky thing which i totally get as a bishop is since i want to start with people already priests because i could take younger people and start them in this seven or eight or nine year process of seminary formation, but then it's a long time. So to get priests to join, I have to get their bishops to agree to let them go, you know, and if someone came to me and said, hey, that's like one of your very finest priests to, you know, so I understand that. So we're in a process now of talking to people, talking to bishops, and seeing if I can get even a small group, you know, two or three in the beginning. I've written a rule for this community and see if people could live it, you know, for a while. You know, it's a long process. You start with a small group and then you see how it goes and then you might go to the Vatican, might get permission for another stage of development. Maybe eventually you could begin recruiting seminarians, etc. But that's where we are, kind of the beginning stages of seeking it out. It's what I feel most passionately about right now at this stage of my life is to have something that would succeed me, you know, and carry on, carry on the work. Whenever there's a, whenever there's a crisis or an inflection point in the life of the church, and this is just historically verifiable, a religious founder emerges and a new religious community emerges as well. It happened with Benedict. It happened with Francis. It happened with Dominic. It happened with Ignatius. There's many, many other examples. That's how the Holy Spirit renews his church. The Holy Spirit calls together religious communities of people who are willing to take the risk of the evangelical councils, because they're a risk, and make the necessary sacrifices to move the church through a crisis or an inflection point. We've been in that crisis or inflection point for some time. Now's the moment for a religious community to emerge. That those great communities that still serve the church to this day, history hasn't stopped and the demands of our particular age are evangelical in nature and that a religious community would emerge that would have that as their particular charism seems to me, to Bishop Barron, to be of the spirit so what we're doing is we're asking the Holy Spirit to bless the church with a new religious community of priests who can not just continue the work that Bishop Barron has been doing, but to amplify it. Because the type of evangelization that's needed for our culture and for the world is not a 25-year project or a 30-year project. It's meant to extend in time. And so, you know, we can talk about the practicalities and all those types of things, but more important than that is the moment has now arisen. And so that Bishop and I have sent forth a call for grace, for the action of the Holy Spirit to renew the church as the Spirit has throughout the centuries. That does it for us today. Thanks for joining us on the Word on Fire show. If you're interested in learning more about how Word on Fire can help you grow closer to Christ, become a better evangelist with and for others, and work for the common good, consider joining the Word on Fire Institute. Check us out at institute.wordonfire.org. That's institute.wordonfire.org. We'll see you next time.
