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.

Peace be with you. Friends, our gospel for today is taken from the very end of

Luke's sermon on the plane. So in Matthew Jesus gives his definitive teaching on

a mountain, the sermon on the mount, in Luke's gospel, his version has Jesus

speaking on a plane. So we've been following his great teaching and we come now

to the end of it where he has a lot of strong things to say about spiritual

teachers and spiritual guides. Mind you, he's been operating here as the

definitive spiritual teacher. If you're looking for the criterion, here it is.

It's Jesus Himself teaching. But now he's commenting on spiritual

teachers we might choose after Him, after He's been raised from the dead and who

are they? What do they like? Which ones are trustworthy? Which ones aren't? And we

get some really good lessons from this little section. And I'd say this,

anyone that is acquainted with TV and especially social media today, there are

a lot of people claiming to be gurus and teachers and spiritual guides. I

mean, there are a diamond dozen. They're thick on the ground. So we got to be

careful. Paul talks about discerning the spirits. Well, we have to also discern

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