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 readings for this weekend are of extraordinary

importance. They have to do with, to give it its technical term, Christian

anthropology, as to say who we are in the presence of God and the Christian

understanding of marriage. These two issues are of enormous significance in our

culture today. And so this brief passage from the Old Testament from the book

of Genesis and our brief passage from the gospel warned close attention. The

opening line now of our reading is well known. The Lord God said, it is not good

for the man to be alone. It's one of the most basic statements of biblical

anthropology. It's not good. So God has created Adam, but he says it's not good for

the man to be alone. That we belong in society, in community, that we belong

together is a fundamental intuition of a biblical anthropology. And here's why

it's interesting. Because modern philosophical views are predicated really on the

opposite assumption that we're dealing first and foremost with individuals.

Think of political theories coming from Thomas Hobbes and John Locke, the people

that influenced our founding fathers. You begin with the individual and his

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