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 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 that

look 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 war between Saul and David. Remember, go back to the first book of Samuel, you'll find these

stories. Saul was the king of Israel, effectively battling on behalf of the Lord, and then along came

David. Young, handsome, brave, brilliant in battle. Soon we hear the women were singing, Saul has

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