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.

Please be with you.

Friends, we come now to the holy season of Lent.

I've said this many times before.

It's like going back to spiritual basics during Lent.

And the readings the church proposes for this holy season

are always remarkably good and interesting and important.

And watch the way the church juxtaposes the readings.

I think with a heightened spiritual attention, we look at these scripture passages. So our gospel

for this first Sunday of Lent is taken from Mark and it's Mark's very iconic, very understated version of the temptation of Jesus in the desert.

So in Matthew and Luke you've got these kind of elaborate narratives that go through the various temptations of the devil and how Jesus

reacts. Here's all that St. Mark says. The Spirit drove Jesus out into the desert. He remained in the desert for 40 days tempted by Satan. He was

among wild beasts and the angels minister to him. That's it. That's all we get as a description of what happened.

So we do indeed hear about the temptation by Satan but no details. And I

want to focus on this mysterious fascinating observation he makes after that.

He was among the wild beasts and the angels ministered to him. I want you to keep that image in your mind like a kind of icon. Jesus in the

desert angels above so to speak ministering to him and then down below he's

with the animals.

It's a commonplace of Christian anthropology that we human beings are a bit like a microcosm.

...