This is Father Robert Barron. Friends, I invite you to reflect with me on the word of God, which is the word on fire.

Word on fire Catholic Ministries is a non-for-profit apostolate dedicated to the mission of evangelization.

We utilize media both old and new to share the faith on every continent and to facilitate an encounter with Christ and His Church.

Through our efforts, we hope to take the gospel out into the peripheries of the culture, where the transformative power of God's Word is most needed.

Let us open our hearts to the word on fire, which is God's Word of Love for each one of us.

If our hearts are open, the Lord can change and transform us, so that we might share the warmth and light of Jesus Christ, who is the Word on fire.

The global benefactors of Word on fire with the support of the art's diocese of Chicago now present Word on fire.

Peace be with you. Friends, we understand the visceral power of our gospel for today.

We have to pay very close attention to our first reading, which is taken from the 13th chapter of the book of Leviticus.

Now, I would hazard a guess that Leviticus is one of the least read books of the sacred scriptures.

And that's too bad, because it's a very interesting book.

It's the ancient Israelite holiness code.

That's to say, a series of prescriptions, laws, prohibitions, by which Israel was identified as a distinctive people.

Now, I know it's easy enough to make fun of sections of it, seeing it maybe as a holdover from a primitive time.

But look, every people, very much including ourselves, have similar codes of thought and behavior.

If you doubt me, take a good look at the canons of political correctness and physical fitness in our society.

I mean, we have a lot of codes and laws and prescriptions about what you can say, what you can't say, what you can do, what you can't do.

Read any of those fitness magazines about the kind of foods you should eat, the kind of foods that are kind of unclean.

We're not all that different.

Are our codes more reasonable than theirs? I don't know, I kind of doubt it.

Anyway, a number of verses in the book of Leviticus have to do with the issue of leprosy or contagious skin disease.

Now, pretty self-back in ancient times, they didn't quite know how to categorize these various diseases.

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