Centered: The Spirituality of Word on Fire

Centered: The Spirituality of Word on Fire by Bishop Barron is a foundational tool for the Word on Fire movement. Its purpose is to help evangelists better understand the spiritual and theological ethos of Word on Fire. The contents of this book are aligned with the Eight Principles of Word on Fire.

Take Centered with you as you pray. Reflect on the ways Bishop Robert Barron articulates the truths of Catholicism and allow them to shape your own understanding. Contemplate the ways in which this expression of faith can mold you in the image of Jesus Christ. Consider it a roadmap by which the ethos and spirituality of Bishop Barron can guide your own daily life of evangelization. Too often we keep our spiritual lives to ourselves, rather than taking available opportunities to tell others of our knowledge of the Catholic faith. This book will help you change that. 

Cloth Hardcover, 168 pages.

The great theologians of the Christian tradition do not typically refer to God as the highest being—which is to say, one being among others, or in David Burrell’s phrase, “the biggest thing around.” Rather, they tend to use the mysterious and evocative language of “Being itself.”

One of the most important things to understand about Christianity is that it is not primarily a philosophy or a system of ethics or a religious ideology. It is a relationship to the unsettling person of Jesus Christ, to the God-man.

Christianity is, above all, a way of seeing. Everything else in Christian life flows from and circles around the transformation of vision. Christians see differently, and that is why their prayer, their worship, their action, their whole way of being in the world have a distinctive accent and flavor.

Since the Bible is the story of God’s dealings with creation, the Scriptures themselves participate in the divine Logos, and particular parts of Scripture participate in one another, contributing to the whole of divine revelation.

Catholics do not hold the Church to be merely a human organization, simply a coming together of like-minded people, a community of purely worldly provenance and purpose. Rather, the Church is like a sacrament of Jesus and, as such, shares in the very being, life, and energy of Christ.

Catholicism is a celebration, in words and imagery, of the God who takes infinite delight in bringing human beings to fullness of life.

Søren Kierkegaard said that the saint is someone whose life is about one thing; a Christian is someone who, at the most fundamental level of his or her being, is centered on the one God of Jesus Christ.

The theme of Jesus’ “inaugural address” is conversion: “The kingdom of God has come near; repent, and believe in the good news” (Mark 1:15). And the motif of his final words is mission: “Go therefore and make disciples of all nations” (Matt. 28:19). The Christian life is lived in between, and under the conditioning of, these two imperatives.

Many of the same surveys that provide the raw numbers in regard to the unaffiliated also tell us why they have decided to leave the Church, and the reasons are, surprisingly, theological.