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, the first reading from the book of Numbers and our

gospel reading from the gospel of Mark, both point to a very interesting problem.

One faced a number of times throughout the Scriptures. We might call it the

problem of the Church becoming its own worst enemy. The Church undermining

itself. Now, think for a minute, one of the most effective means of undermining

your opponent is divide and conquer, right? Set your enemy somehow at odds with

himself and you can sweep him away easily enough. Let him fight himself and

you won't have to fight him. I always think here of the Tolkien trilogy and

the orcs. Remember those fierce creatures? It looks so intimidating. But the orcs

actually aren't that much of a problem. Why? They're always fighting among

themselves. All you have to do is wait long enough and the orcs will kill each

other off because they're divided against themselves. Well, the enemy of the

Church loves to undermine us in the same way. By sowing dissension, jealousy,

rivalry, turf wars. So we spend our enemy our energy not working for the Lord,

but fighting each other. Probably the best biblical example of this is the

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