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 and 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 this weekend gives us one of the great scenes of healing in the

Ministry of Jesus. And as is usually the case, the gospel writer composes the

scene in such a way that it becomes an icon of the spiritual life in general. We

recall that especially in the gospel of Mark, the healing power of Christ is

emphasized. Certainly in Matthew and Luke, he's a healer, no question, but he's

also much more of a teacher in those gospels. In Mark, I'd say he's

preeminently a healer. He's a wonder worker. So let's attend to this short

but very important account in some detail. We first hear a leper came to

Jesus. There's a world of meaning in that little phrase. And the church couples

this gospel with that reading from the book of Leviticus is very important

because we learn from Leviticus precisely what being a leper meant for a

first century Jew. So a leper came to Jesus. We say, oh, someone with a skin

disease, but for someone in the first century in the Jewish setting, there was a

lot more to it. First, it meant being declared publicly unclean. Not like you

you've got some, you know, private thing you're embarrassed about and in the

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