This is Cardinal Francis George. I invite you to join me for the next two minutes to reflect

with Father Robert Barron on the Word of God, which is the Word on Fire. Word on Fire Catholic

Ministries is a non-profit ministry at the forefront of Catholic evangelization, using

new media to spread the faith and every continent. Father Barron challenges us to open our hearts

to the Word on Fire, which is God's Word of Love for each of us. If our hearts are open,

the Lord can change and transform us so that we might speak with love about the one who

is love. The global benefactors of Word on Fire with the support of the Archdiocese of

Chicago now present Word on Fire.

Peace be with you. Friends are gospel for today, taken from the 5th chapter of Mark's Gospel,

is a masterpiece, both in a literary and a spiritual sense. The story itself is a very

artfully crafted interweaving of two tightly related narratives. The story of the woman with

the hemorrhage is sandwiched in between two sections of the story of the raising of

gyrosis daughter. So the two stories are intertwined. We're compelled to read them together. That's

what Mark is doing. Now, to get at the theological and spiritual power of this gospel, we have to

re-acquaint ourselves with the Jewish attitudes regarding the clean and the unclean. See, it's a

world that was very important in ancient times. It's largely alien to us. But to get what's at

stake in these stories, we have to move back into that universe. I suggest that a treasure trove

for the sociology of ancient Jewish practice is the book of Leviticus. There you'll find

page after page of carefully laid out prescriptions, laws, directives dealing with animals,

plants, food, situations that are clean and unclean. That was the central preoccupation of the book

of Leviticus to guide your way through life so that you know what was acceptable, what wasn't

acceptable. The deep conviction of ancient Jews and of many other ancient peoples, too,

...