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, I want to preach you today about a kind of obscure

passage from the Old Testament, from the second book of Kings. Can I just say by

the way as I start? For those just beginning with the Bible, one in two Kings,

it's not a bad place to start. They're full of very interesting characters, kind of

adventurous stories. So this one's from Second Kings and it has to do with the

prophet Elisha. Now Elisha was the successor to probably the better-known

prophet Elijah. Remember the famous scene when Elijah's taken up into heaven

in the fiery chariot? He leaves his mantle behind Elisha picks up the mantle.

So he's the successor of Elijah. Well, there's a lot of interesting stories now

associated with Elisha because he's both a teacher and a miracle worker. In fact,

a very interesting connection is between Elisha and Jesus. Both prophets from

the northern part of the Promised Land from Israel and Jesus too is teacher and

miracle worker. In fact, a lot of his miracles echo those of Elisha. So just

keep that in mind as we look at this. He's in some ways an anticipation of Jesus

himself. The narrative I'm going to preach on is on the surface kind of simple

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