# Why We Love Distractions - Bishop Robert Barron Daily Sermons

An episode of [Daily Sermons With Bishop Robert Barron](https://invisiblenetwork.ai/podcast/6783446284), 4 Jul 2026, 23 min.

Audio: https://dts.podtrac.com/redirect.mp3/api.spreaker.com/download/episode/72733575/why_we_love_distractions.mp3



## Transcript

[0:00] Speaker 1: We have to deal with the great abiding central questions
[0:07] Speaker 1: about God, about meaning, about where my life is going,
[0:11] Speaker 1: about death, the fact of death, the fact that I'm
[0:16] Speaker 1: confronted with eternity. You know, there's this life I'm leading
[0:20] Speaker 1: and then it's surrounded, as it were, by eternity. But
[0:24] Speaker 1: those questions are so hard, and they're so challenging, and
[0:28] Speaker 1: they're just They're two immense and so what I do
[0:32] Speaker 1: is I distract myself endlessly from them.
[0:44] Speaker 2: Welcome back to the Word on Fire show. I'm Brandon Vatt,
[0:47] Speaker 2: the host and the senior publishing director at Word on Fire.
[0:51] Speaker 2: We love being distracted. Why is it so hard to
[0:55] Speaker 2: sit still quietly and contemplate reality? And how can a
[1:00] Speaker 2: seventeenth century philosopher help us escape this quandary. That's what
[1:04] Speaker 2: we're discussing today with Bishop Robert Baron, who joins us
[1:07] Speaker 2: as he usually does from our studio in Rochester. Bishop welcome, Hey, Brandon,
[1:11] Speaker 2: good morning, Good to see us always. You have had
[1:15] Speaker 2: an extraordinarily busy last couple months, but probably the big
[1:18] Speaker 2: event was your international travel to World Youth Day, which
[1:22] Speaker 2: was in Lisbon, Portugal. Tell us how that went?
[1:25] Speaker 1: It was great? I loved it. I've been to four
[1:27] Speaker 1: World Youth Days now. I was in Madrid, Kraco, Panama,
[1:31] Speaker 1: and now Lisbon and loved it. You know, you got
[1:34] Speaker 1: a million or whatever kids showing up, and we wandered
[1:37] Speaker 1: around the city and he was able to talk to
[1:39] Speaker 1: all these different groups. I gave five separate talks. My
[1:42] Speaker 1: favorite really was the evening with the English speakers, mostly
[1:45] Speaker 1: American kids, like fifteen thousand in this big park, and
[1:49] Speaker 1: we had blessed sacramentderation, great sacred silence, you know, in
[1:53] Speaker 1: that moment, I gave a little like twenty minute sermon.
[1:58] Speaker 1: Loved it, loved the opportunity to reach out to the
[2:00] Speaker 1: kids and to evangelize.
[2:02] Speaker 2: I want to talk to you about one of our
[2:04] Speaker 2: mutual heroes, Blaize Pascal. He was a seventeenth century French mathematician, physicist,
[2:11] Speaker 2: Catholic philosopher. You know, I studied engineering in physics in college,
[2:14] Speaker 2: and those who have taken math or science courses will
[2:16] Speaker 2: recognize that his name is what's used for the unit
[2:20] Speaker 2: of pressure. You know that there's five pascals of pressure,
[2:23] Speaker 2: ten pascals of pressure. But he wrote a great philosophical
[2:27] Speaker 2: work called the Ponces, where he famously observed this. He said, quote,
[2:32] Speaker 2: the sole cause of man's unhappiness is that he does
[2:36] Speaker 2: not know how to stay quietly in his room. He
[2:40] Speaker 2: also says in the Ponces that quote, our nature consists
[2:44] Speaker 2: in movement. Absolute rest is death. What's Pascal getting at here?
[2:51] Speaker 1: Is such an important figure, You're right, fascinating figure dies young.
[2:54] Speaker 1: He was only in his what late thirties I think
[2:56] Speaker 1: when he died, but made this, as you say, massive
[2:59] Speaker 1: kind ttribution to the sciences and to computer technology. Pascal
[3:03] Speaker 1: is behind much of that too, and then he makes
[3:07] Speaker 1: this extraordinary contribution to philosophy and theology. The paulse are Are,
[3:15] Speaker 1: I mean, really one of the great literary works of
[3:17] Speaker 1: that time, and they come down to us at such
[3:20] Speaker 1: a high literary quality, but also of tremendous spiritual power.
[3:26] Speaker 1: I think he's an under valued person. When I was
[3:29] Speaker 1: coming of age, we didn't read much of Pascal. I
[3:32] Speaker 1: kind of discovered him later in life, and I think
[3:35] Speaker 1: maybe you have to be a bit later in life
[3:37] Speaker 1: to appreciate him, because you might read him and just
[3:39] Speaker 1: find him kind of mordant and pessimistic. But he's not that.
[3:44] Speaker 1: He's he's a real mystic and he combines his mysticism
[3:48] Speaker 1: with high intelligence. There he's like John of Acrosse, right,
[3:52] Speaker 1: the greatest spiritual master, but has a tumistic, sort of
[3:56] Speaker 1: disciplined mind. Pascal is similar. But the pulse are such
[4:00] Speaker 1: a gem set of that. They were literally written on
[4:04] Speaker 1: pieces of paper and he strung them around his apartment
[4:07] Speaker 1: in Paris, and they were collected after he died. And
[4:11] Speaker 1: they think they were like preparatory notes for a great
[4:14] Speaker 1: work of apologetics he was thinking about. But they've come
[4:18] Speaker 1: down to us as little aphorisms. There is a bit
[4:20] Speaker 1: like Nietzsche, you know. Nietzsche's writing is an aphoristic form,
[4:24] Speaker 1: and Pascal is like that. But they're just gems, and
[4:27] Speaker 1: you can chew on each one, you know, and draw
[4:30] Speaker 1: a nourishment from them. Anyway, I forgot the original question
[4:34] Speaker 1: you asked because I was going on about Pascal's life.
[4:36] Speaker 1: It was what's he getting at with the sitting quietly
[4:40] Speaker 1: in a rome? Right? I think what was getting at
[4:44] Speaker 1: is we have to deal with the great abiding central
[4:52] Speaker 1: questions about God, about meaning, about where my life is going,
[4:58] Speaker 1: about death, the fact of death, the fact that I'm
[5:03] Speaker 1: confronted with eternity. You know, there's this life I'm leading,
[5:07] Speaker 1: and then it's surrounded, as it were, by eternity. But
[5:11] Speaker 1: those questions are so hard, and they're so challenging, and
[5:15] Speaker 1: they're just they're two immense and so what I do
[5:19] Speaker 1: is I distract myself endlessly from them. And I can't
[5:24] Speaker 1: sit quietly why because those questions will invade me, Those
[5:27] Speaker 1: questions will come at me. Think of it, as you
[5:31] Speaker 1: know that one of the more unpleasant experiences life when
[5:34] Speaker 1: you wake up in the middle of the night and
[5:35] Speaker 1: you're lying in bed, and there's something about that time
[5:37] Speaker 1: where your brain just starts sending anxious signals to you.
[5:43] Speaker 1: And if you sit long enough, oh, questions of when
[5:48] Speaker 1: am I going to die? And what happens after I die?
[5:50] Speaker 1: And where am I going at it? Is my wife
[5:53] Speaker 1: mean anything? And those will come to you too, And
[5:56] Speaker 1: so we want to avoid that. Take a pill so
[6:01] Speaker 1: I get back to sleep and not think about those things.
[6:03] Speaker 1: Or let me get out of bed, so get to
[6:05] Speaker 1: work and I don't have to think about those things.
[6:07] Speaker 1: To sit quietly in a room by oneself, not distracted
[6:11] Speaker 1: by a book or anything. Or now you look at us,
[6:14] Speaker 1: we're masters of distraction with all our machines. Without those things,
[6:19] Speaker 1: you can confront those questions for the first time. Maybe
[6:23] Speaker 1: that's what he's driving it there. I think.
[6:26] Speaker 2: One thing that is interesting about Pascal is almost as
[6:29] Speaker 2: a master psychologist, he highlights the paradox that these diversions introduce.
[6:35] Speaker 2: He says, and I'm quoting him, the only thing that
[6:38] Speaker 2: consoles us for our miseries is diversion, and yet it
[6:43] Speaker 2: is the greatest of our miseries. Why did he consider
[6:46] Speaker 2: diversions to be so problematic? First of all? But if
[6:49] Speaker 2: they're so problematic, why do we still love to be diverted,
[6:53] Speaker 2: to be distracted.
[6:54] Speaker 1: Yeah, because the questions are too much, Right, the questions
[6:57] Speaker 1: are too much. But that's the only way I'm really
[6:59] Speaker 1: going to live is by conferring those questions. Which is
[7:01] Speaker 1: why the diversions themselves become a source of misery, right,
[7:05] Speaker 1: because I'm going to live in a superficial way. If
[7:07] Speaker 1: I'm diverting myself all the time, necessarily I'm living in
[7:10] Speaker 1: a superficial way. So that produces its own misery, you know,
[7:14] Speaker 1: its own sense of absurdity. So that's why I'm kind
[7:17] Speaker 1: of caught in a way. He was a you know,
[7:19] Speaker 1: long before the psychologist of the twentieth century. He was
[7:22] Speaker 1: so good at naming these these kind of dilemmas. We
[7:25] Speaker 1: get ourselves into, these ab poor rheas the philosophers call them,
[7:29] Speaker 1: like these these sort of impossible situations. And that's a
[7:33] Speaker 1: good example, is that I can't distract myself. I must
[7:37] Speaker 1: distract myself, and that's where I live. In that space.
[7:42] Speaker 1: The saint, you might say, is someone who's able to
[7:43] Speaker 1: set aside the diversions and engage those questions in a
[7:48] Speaker 1: sufficiently serious and life enhancing way. Right. That's a saint,
[7:52] Speaker 1: or a real contemplative is able to do that. I think,
[7:55] Speaker 1: Brad at the times in my life when I've gone
[7:57] Speaker 1: on and retreat and I go to a monastery, let's say,
[8:00] Speaker 1: and I say, all right, all right, I am this time,
[8:03] Speaker 1: I'm going to do it. This time, I'm really going
[8:07] Speaker 1: to confront the Greek question. And I'm not saying I
[8:10] Speaker 1: never I do. I do. But even in those settings,
[8:14] Speaker 1: I find myself getting restless or bored or seeking some
[8:17] Speaker 1: sort of distraction. You know, whether that might even be
[8:21] Speaker 1: like in a good book, But still the good book
[8:23] Speaker 1: is distracting me from the question I should be dealing with.
[8:28] Speaker 1: We can't sit quietly by ourselves. If we could, well,
[8:32] Speaker 1: we might go crazy, or we might become a saint.
[8:36] Speaker 2: You know, I first got into Pascal through the work
[8:40] Speaker 2: of Peter Kraft. I think a lot of younger people, yeah,
[8:43] Speaker 2: first came that route. Craft has this great book called
[8:45] Speaker 2: Christianity for Modern Pagans, which is an annotated version of
[8:49] Speaker 2: Pascal's Ponces. And here's Cravee's illustration of what Pascal's getting at.
[8:54] Speaker 2: He says, quote, if you are typically modern, your life
[8:58] Speaker 2: is like a mansion with a terrifying hole right in
[9:02] Speaker 2: the middle of the living room floor. So you paper
[9:05] Speaker 2: over the hole with a very busy wallpaper pattern to
[9:08] Speaker 2: distract yourself. Or he says, you find a rhinoceros in
[9:12] Speaker 2: the middle of your house. The rhinoceros is wretchedness and death.
[9:16] Speaker 2: How in the world can you hide a rhinoceros?
[9:18] Speaker 1: Easy?
[9:19] Speaker 2: Cover it with a million mice, multiple diversions. But I
[9:24] Speaker 2: think where craped is most useful is he notes, affirming
[9:27] Speaker 2: what Pascal says that, Uh, the distractions don't trouble us.
[9:32] Speaker 1: We chase after them.
[9:33] Speaker 2: We want to be busy, We want to be distracted
[9:36] Speaker 2: because if we had true leisure, then we'd be forced
[9:39] Speaker 2: to look at ourselves, to listen to our hearts and
[9:42] Speaker 2: see that great gaping hole that's right in the middle.
[9:45] Speaker 1: Yeah, and what's if you talk to most people, how
[9:48] Speaker 1: you doing? Oh? Really busy? I'm really busy. And that's
[9:52] Speaker 1: that's usually seen as kind of a positive thing. I
[9:55] Speaker 1: think in my world of you know, priests, how's it going?
[9:58] Speaker 1: Oh man, I'm so busy. I am so or like
[10:01] Speaker 1: my own life. Oh yeah, I'm doing this, I'm doing that,
[10:04] Speaker 1: and all right, I'm you know, I'm serving the kingdom.
[10:07] Speaker 1: You know, I'll tell myself and it's probably true to
[10:09] Speaker 1: a decree. But am I also just caught in a
[10:12] Speaker 1: pascalion uh game here? You know, of like I'm just
[10:15] Speaker 1: I'm just distracted by all these activities and trips and
[10:19] Speaker 1: you know, so it's a good way to examine your conscience.
[10:22] Speaker 1: You know, how how am I using all this stuff
[10:25] Speaker 1: in my life? Do you remember this scene in uh,
[10:29] Speaker 1: one of Woody Allen's early movies where he's he's an
[10:32] Speaker 1: obsessive over the Kennedy assassination, and so he's with his
[10:36] Speaker 1: girlfriend and suddenly he just breaks into more obsessiveness about
[10:39] Speaker 1: the Grassy Knoll and the gunmen. Then and then she says,
[10:43] Speaker 1: you know, I think you're using the jfk assassination to
[10:46] Speaker 1: distract yourself from the trouble in our relationship. And then
[10:49] Speaker 1: what He turns the camera and goes, she's right, Well,
[10:54] Speaker 1: that's a very Pascalian moment, because I think a lot
[10:56] Speaker 1: of us do that, whatever we're into. And then someone said,
[10:59] Speaker 1: I think you're just distracting yourself from the question of
[11:02] Speaker 1: life and death and meaning, you know, I think you're right.
[11:05] Speaker 1: So that's the covering there, right, Unces with a million mice,
[11:08] Speaker 1: you know, So what's the way out? I don't know, Brandon.
[11:14] Speaker 1: It does take an extraordinary spiritual discipline to confront those
[11:19] Speaker 1: questions honestly and with faith. You know, we that we
[11:25] Speaker 1: do this, no one doubts it. That's clearer. But how
[11:28] Speaker 1: do we solve the problem? Pascal Price? They learn to
[11:32] Speaker 1: sit quietly in a room, and you know, we might
[11:36] Speaker 1: translate into the language of contemplation. Set aside your obsessive
[11:41] Speaker 1: activity and learn to be a contemplative more.
[11:45] Speaker 2: I think you're right. I think for Pascal contemplation would
[11:48] Speaker 2: be the antidote for distractions. I think two of Joseph Peeper,
[11:52] Speaker 2: who wrote a lot on the theory of leisure and
[11:55] Speaker 2: the need for true leisure. How do we distinguish between
[11:59] Speaker 2: distract diversions and true leisure? From leisure from distractions? And
[12:05] Speaker 2: can leisure ever turn into distractions? You gave the example
[12:09] Speaker 2: of reading a book a book. I think that can
[12:11] Speaker 2: sometimes be leisure activities sometimes distractions. How do we navigate that?
[12:15] Speaker 1: Yeah, I suppose you have to look at the big picture,
[12:17] Speaker 1: don't you? Am I as a general rule of avoiding
[12:21] Speaker 1: the great questions life and death and meeting and purpose
[12:26] Speaker 1: in God? Am I? Am I purposely getting away from
[12:29] Speaker 1: all that? Or are the things I'm doing, from reading
[12:32] Speaker 1: a book to watching a baseball game to having a good,
[12:34] Speaker 1: you know, conversation, are they in service of these ultimate goods?
[12:39] Speaker 1: And are they in relation to what I've determined about
[12:43] Speaker 1: those great questions? Because you know, it's not a not
[12:45] Speaker 1: a stark either or. I mean, I think if you
[12:48] Speaker 1: have come to grips with those questions, that I mean,
[12:51] Speaker 1: you can live your life in a joyful way and
[12:54] Speaker 1: you can give yourself to certain things and they're not
[12:56] Speaker 1: functioning to distract you. So I think that's it's not
[13:02] Speaker 1: an either or. Pascal can sometimes give that impression of
[13:06] Speaker 1: being a sort of an either or a thinker, but
[13:10] Speaker 1: you know, prayer for us. I think under Fulden Chaine's influence.
[13:14] Speaker 1: You know, when I started doing a Holy Hour every morning,
[13:18] Speaker 1: did it this morning, in season out, no matter what. Well, okay,
[13:23] Speaker 1: that's trying to overcome the Pascalian problems. I'm going to say,
[13:28] Speaker 1: you know, purposely, I never bring my phone into the chapel.
[13:31] Speaker 1: It's on purpose, never bring it in. So at least
[13:34] Speaker 1: for that hour, I'm in dialogue with God. The psalms
[13:38] Speaker 1: are leading me through a meditation on deep and important things.
[13:43] Speaker 1: I'll set even that book of the Bravery down and
[13:47] Speaker 1: just spend some time, you know, gazing at the tabernacle.
[13:50] Speaker 1: So that in itself is a very Pascalean kind of discipline,
[13:54] Speaker 1: isn't it? The Holy Hour? That, at least for that hour,
[13:57] Speaker 1: I'm guaranteed I'm going to be conf fronting the great questions.
[14:02] Speaker 2: I think up and down the centuries, one way that
[14:05] Speaker 2: Christians have escaped diversions is by quite literally physically fleeing
[14:10] Speaker 2: them by going to the desert. The Bible and Church
[14:13] Speaker 2: history are filled with people who flee distractions by going
[14:16] Speaker 2: into these isolated places. Why is the desert in particular
[14:21] Speaker 2: so central to Christianity.
[14:23] Speaker 1: No, for just that reason, and because distractions fall away there,
[14:28] Speaker 1: there's nothing to divert your attention from the great issues.
[14:33] Speaker 1: And that's why so many, as you say, the biblical authors,
[14:35] Speaker 1: now the Bible comes out of a desert culture. If
[14:39] Speaker 1: you go around the world, it might be into the
[14:40] Speaker 1: forest or into the tundra or something, but the idea
[14:44] Speaker 1: is the same. But you have to get away from
[14:46] Speaker 1: the distractions. Something we've done, you know, as a church,
[14:50] Speaker 1: in the new program of preesta formation, we have a
[14:53] Speaker 1: propadutic year. We call it a preparatory year before a
[14:57] Speaker 1: guy enters the formal seminary process. And one of the
[15:00] Speaker 1: features of it that I really like is there's a
[15:03] Speaker 1: detox from social media. So we require the students to
[15:08] Speaker 1: surrender their phones and so for a year. Now I
[15:11] Speaker 1: think they can check them for emergencies and all that,
[15:13] Speaker 1: but for a year, basically they fast from the Internet
[15:17] Speaker 1: and from Facebook and everything else. And almost to a person,
[15:21] Speaker 1: they will say that was the most important part of
[15:25] Speaker 1: the probadudicure was that I detoxed from the phone. That's
[15:31] Speaker 1: that's the way we can do it. That's that's a
[15:33] Speaker 1: very practical thing we can do. That's like a desert
[15:36] Speaker 1: for a lot of us. Heck, I look, I'm looking
[15:38] Speaker 1: at my right now because I've set it aside during
[15:40] Speaker 1: this conversation, but the minute we end, I'll probably check it. Now.
[15:45] Speaker 1: Part of that is emergencies, and I'm the bishop of diocese.
[15:47] Speaker 1: I got to be a tenant to that. But you know,
[15:49] Speaker 1: even if it's the end of the day, there are
[15:51] Speaker 1: no emergency, I probably checked the darn thing anyway. So
[15:54] Speaker 1: that that's that's a that's a negative spiritually in our culture.
[15:59] Speaker 2: Now, I'm curious if you could maybe share personally how
[16:04] Speaker 2: you escape diversions. You gave the example of your Holy hour,
[16:08] Speaker 2: you intentionally leave the phone behind, but right you since
[16:11] Speaker 2: yourself becoming overly attached to diverting activities, how how do
[16:16] Speaker 2: you escape that in your life?
[16:17] Speaker 1: Yeah, well, that's the number one thing I'd say is
[16:19] Speaker 1: prayer is and to cocratize that with the Holy Hour
[16:23] Speaker 1: and give oneself to the works of love or the
[16:26] Speaker 1: work of service in some basic way, return to the
[16:30] Speaker 1: Gospel fundamentals. I would say, prayer and service and study
[16:35] Speaker 1: and so on. But I'll tell you it is whenever
[16:39] Speaker 1: I read Pascal, I feel judged in a good way.
[16:42] Speaker 1: I know he's naming something that's very real my own life,
[16:47] Speaker 1: and there's a there's a how would I describe it,
[16:49] Speaker 1: there's a texture to the feeling that comes from spending
[16:54] Speaker 1: too much time with distractions, you know what I mean.
[16:57] Speaker 1: For Pascal himself, by the way, it was gam because
[17:01] Speaker 1: he was so good in mathematician that he was good
[17:03] Speaker 1: with cards and all that, and so he would fritter
[17:05] Speaker 1: away enormous amounts of time gambling. And you think, like,
[17:09] Speaker 1: here's one of the great geniuses of the Western world,
[17:13] Speaker 1: and he knew I wasted so much time. And I'll
[17:17] Speaker 1: find Brandon at times during the day and it's this symbol.
[17:22] Speaker 1: Now we all have the thumb of we're going through
[17:24] Speaker 1: the Facebook or scrolling through whatever, and after a while,
[17:28] Speaker 1: it's like you it's a sickness. You feel like you
[17:30] Speaker 1: feel sticky, You're unwell, you know, like, why am I
[17:35] Speaker 1: looking at these silly pictures and Facebook whatever? They are?
[17:40] Speaker 1: Like why am I looking at this? But his answer
[17:44] Speaker 1: is it's not just oh, because they're mildly entertaining. There's
[17:48] Speaker 1: something distracting that your soul doesn't want the deep stuff,
[17:53] Speaker 1: and so it's it's attracted weirdly to this superficiality. But
[18:00] Speaker 1: maybe let that feeling sink in and say, boy, I
[18:02] Speaker 1: need the desert right now, I need some desert time.
[18:05] Speaker 2: It reminds me of something we've discussed before when we've
[18:08] Speaker 2: talked about social media. In that famous Netflix documentary The
[18:11] Speaker 2: Social Dilemma, they point to the invention of the infinite
[18:15] Speaker 2: scroll as one of the worst features of social media
[18:17] Speaker 2: because there's no end to the distraction. It just keeps
[18:20] Speaker 2: going and going and going.
[18:21] Speaker 1: Is that right? Is that weird thing in our psychology
[18:24] Speaker 1: that you're looking at this silly, you know, set of
[18:27] Speaker 1: whatever they are, But but another one's coming. This could
[18:31] Speaker 1: be something really interesting, and you know, and to be fair,
[18:34] Speaker 1: sometimes sure I do come across interesting articles or you know,
[18:37] Speaker 1: oh yeah, I want to see what's going on there.
[18:40] Speaker 1: So as you're going through that's stupid, I don't want
[18:42] Speaker 1: to waste the time, that's ridiculous. But there's one more
[18:44] Speaker 1: coming and that could be the one that's going to
[18:47] Speaker 1: get my attention, and you just have to. I don't know.
[18:50] Speaker 1: Those things are are very they're dangerous spiritually. I don't
[18:54] Speaker 1: just mean like you know, for pornography and these really
[18:56] Speaker 1: explicit things. But I mean just that dynamic is dangerous spiritually,
[19:01] Speaker 1: and Pascal should be the patron saint maybe of our
[19:05] Speaker 1: time for that reason, the very fact that he's behind computers,
[19:10] Speaker 1: his theorizing is behind computer technology, and he's the great
[19:15] Speaker 1: profit of distraction, you know, So that's interesting.
[19:21] Speaker 2: I think Crape said he's the first great post medieval apologist,
[19:25] Speaker 2: and he was born three hundred years before his time, that,
[19:28] Speaker 2: as you said, could be the patron saint of our
[19:30] Speaker 2: digital age.
[19:31] Speaker 1: He's buried in the Sanatien Dumont in Paris. I used
[19:35] Speaker 1: to go buy it all the time, and in those
[19:38] Speaker 1: days when I lived in Paris, I didn't I knew
[19:40] Speaker 1: the name Pascal, but I had not really read him
[19:42] Speaker 1: at all, but I used to walk by his tomb
[19:44] Speaker 1: all the time when I was in Paris.
[19:55] Speaker 2: Well, it's time now for our question from one of
[19:57] Speaker 2: our listeners. If you have one for Bishop Baron, you
[19:59] Speaker 2: can send it in to us at the website Askbishop
[20:02] Speaker 2: Baron dot com. Today we have one from Jack in Louisville, Kentucky.
[20:06] Speaker 2: He's asking about the laity in the church. Here's Jack's question. Hi,
[20:14] Speaker 2: Bishop Baron. This is Jack from Louisville, Kentucky. What are
[20:18] Speaker 2: some things we as lay people can do to build
[20:20] Speaker 2: unity in the church?
[20:22] Speaker 1: Yeah? Good, Stop being cruel to each other. We're talking
[20:26] Speaker 1: about the Internet a lot today. I mean the amount
[20:28] Speaker 1: of cruelty that's expressed on the Internet. And you know,
[20:30] Speaker 1: let's I suppose there are some clerics on the internet,
[20:33] Speaker 1: but it's ninety nine percent lay people. Stop being cruel
[20:36] Speaker 1: to each other. Stop using people as a means to
[20:40] Speaker 1: an end. You know, when you're dealing with someone, let's say,
[20:43] Speaker 1: on the Internet, can you really say, when I send
[20:46] Speaker 1: this response or this comment, I'm doing it out of love.
[20:50] Speaker 1: I'm willing the good of the other. If you could
[20:53] Speaker 1: say that, hit the button off you go, can't, don't
[20:56] Speaker 1: do it. Stop being cruel. On the positive side, I
[20:59] Speaker 1: would say, do the works of faith, hope and love.
[21:01] Speaker 1: That's what you're called to do. The laity are meant
[21:04] Speaker 1: to go into the world, into the secular space and
[21:07] Speaker 1: bring grace. There. You bring faith, hope, and love, and
[21:10] Speaker 1: that will, by its very nature, bring about unity because
[21:13] Speaker 1: those are the theological virtues. So stop being cruel, start
[21:18] Speaker 1: spreading faith, hope and love. Well as we wrap up.
[21:21] Speaker 2: Here today, i'd like to share with you the first
[21:24] Speaker 2: book by Word on Fire's new Spark imprint for young kids,
[21:28] Speaker 2: Spark being a little Flame. So this is our imprint
[21:30] Speaker 2: of books for children and other young readers. The first
[21:33] Speaker 2: book we're releasing is called Saintly Creatures and their Holy Companions,
[21:38] Speaker 2: just debuted. Inside this book you will discover exciting tales
[21:41] Speaker 2: of God's creatures and the holy men and women they encountered.
[21:44] Speaker 2: You'll read about an enormous dog who protected a French
[21:47] Speaker 2: priest from an ambush, a tiger who shared his cave
[21:51] Speaker 2: with persecuted Korean Christians, a dangerous wolf who was tamed
[21:55] Speaker 2: by an Italian friar, and a bore who was rescued
[21:58] Speaker 2: from hunters by a wy Irish abbess. Each of these
[22:02] Speaker 2: fourteen stories shows the heroic virtue of the saints and
[22:06] Speaker 2: inspires young readers to faithfully follow Jesus. If you're a parent, grandparent,
[22:11] Speaker 2: and uncle sponsor, this is a great book to get
[22:14] Speaker 2: for your kids and introduce them to the Saints again.
[22:17] Speaker 2: It's called Saintly Creatures and their Holy Companions. First book
[22:21] Speaker 2: for word on Fire Spark, and I'll be sure to
[22:23] Speaker 2: include a link in the show notes. Well, thanks everyone
[22:26] Speaker 2: for watching and listening, and we'll see you next time
[22:29] Speaker 2: on the Word on Fire Show

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