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, the first reading from Genesis and the Gospel from Mark are super

important because they have to do with what we call technically Christian anthropology, the Christian or biblical understanding of who we are, and most

specifically in relation to marriage and family.

Topics obviously of importance to a lot of people today.

How we define ourselves, who we are, the readings in kind of a beautifully compact way of

bring this out. So what I want to do is just kind of march us through this

Genesis readings from chapter 2 of Genesis. Read those first three chapters of

Genesis in a way you get the whole trajectory of the

chapters of Genesis in a way you get the whole trajectory of the Old Testament. But let's look at this line by line.

The Lord God said it's not good for the man to be alone. I will make a suitable partner for him.

Now that's saying an awful lot. In basic biblical anthropology, the fundamental unit is not the individual.

You'll find that in some of the founders of modern political philosophy look at Thomas Hobbs look at

John Locke where the individual and his rights and prerogatives and so on is the

building block of society. Not true in the Bible, not true in Catholic social teaching, in which

the fundamental building block of society is not the individual, but the

family.

The Lord God said it's not good for the man to be alone.

The Bible is not an individualistic system.

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