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, it's the 15th Sunday of Ordinary Time, and our gospel is from the 6th chapter of Mark.

Mark, the first gospel, this rather spare understated gospel, but gosh, every part of it,

precisely for that reason, is worth paying attention to.

The one for today is Jesus sending the 12 out on mission.

And here's why I particularly love this. We are at, if you want, the very earliest moments of the church.

In a way, it's the pre-church because we're prior to the death and resurrection of the Lord and the

sending of the Spirit. You might say after that after Pentecost you have the church

and the full sense on display. So we're like in a pre-church the earliest moments, but for

that very reason it's really important for us to pay attention to what the Lord tells them.

I might have told the story before,

but gosh, it haunts my mind.

Cardinal George's last speech to the priest of Chicago.

When he said,

remember brothers in the early church, there was no Vatican, there were no diocese, no

chancery offices, no parishes, no Catholic schools, no Catholic hospitals.

In other words, none of the institutional apparatus of a church was around.

However, he said, there were evangelists.

And his point, which is, gosh, it's so well taken, so important.

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