Twentieth Sunday Luke 12: 49-53

CEBU, Philippines - The short passage of the Gospel today is  packed with dynamite. And Jesus seems to present a pretty  grim picture  of what He was up to, namely  to set the world on fire, to  go through the anguish of His baptism  (and that, for us to follow);  and finally,  to bring division to households. Isn’t this a terrible picture of a terrible God? Yet, Jesus has been teaching us that  God is a loving Father and that  He is the Prince of Peace.

How are we to understand this passage? First,  fire  has many purposes. There is a  destructive fire  that wipes out and destroys, often causing immense damage to homes, buildings, and properties. There is also thebeneficial fire  that cooks food for the hungry, warms those that are cold, purifies what is polluted like refining gold or silver, or boiling water, and brightens the hearth in the family home. But the Lord is speaking of  fire in a symbolic sense.

What does fire symbolize? In  present day thinking, fire symbolizes violence or passion, but also  love in the highest form. We speak of a burning hatred, the heat of passion, the consuming fire of love, the flames of undying love. Yet, to understand what our Lord meant in today’s Gospel, it is necessary to know what fire symbolizes in the mind of those who wrote the Scriptures. In the Scriptures, fire is a symbol of  divine presence, e.g. the burning bush.

Often in the  prophetic books,  the  divine presence is that of  judgment  and  chastisement. But Jesus did not come to judge and chastise the world.  â€œGod did not send his Son into the world to condemn the world, but that the world might be saved through him.”

So, when Jesus says in today’s Gospel: “I have come to bring fire to the earth, and how I wish it were blazing already.” It cannot mean the fire of judgment and chastisement.

There is another symbolic meaning of fire in the Scripture, and that is  cleansing, purification, transformation to a more perfect state, e.g. Isaiah being cleansed with a burning coal. When the Holy Spirit descended upon those in the upper room on Pentecost, it was in  tongues of fire.  They were  transformed.

This is what the Savior came to do: to  cleanse, to  purify, to  transform  – purificationfrom all evil, transformation  into a new creature, a  child of God  sharing  His own divine sonship. This is what John the Baptist prophesied of Him. He will baptize you, that is  immerse you in the Holy Spirit and fire.

To a world deprived of human warmth, of hope for a truly universal communion, and of selfless love,  Christ brings the fire of his love. Only that fire can give warmth to our hearts, cause ill-feelings to melt, bring about the disappearance of “cold wars” which prevent nations from living as brothers.

It is the will of God that something in us be burning and hurting. We all have met people whom we suspected to be on fire, consumed by something not of this earth – hunger and thirst for justice, mercy, expectation of God – they in turn have set us on fire.

Inasmuch as we want to light up on earth the fire of love, to bring about a revolution of mentalities and structures, then we are driven to the same baptism as that of Jesus, we must follow in his footsteps, go through the anguish of dispossession and failure, consent to give our lives for the sake of the ideal we have chosen.

Msgr. Arthur Tonne tells this story. A stagecoach was rumbling through western Montana. It was bitterly cold. The driver did everything to keep his two passengers warm – a woman and her tiny baby. But the mother was getting drowsy from the cold. If she fell asleep, she would never wake up again. He pulled the horses to a halt, wrapped the baby and put it under the seat. Then he dragged the mother from the coach, slammed the door shut, and drove off. TURN TO NEXT PAGE...

Frantically the mother stumbled after him, screaming for her baby. When the driver felt sure the woman was awake and warm, he stopped until she caught up with the coach. It was a rough way to keep her alive, but that mother was always grateful to that driver.

He had done what God often does. To shake us out of our spiritual drowsiness and laziness, our heavenly Father often permits trials and troubles that awaken us, sometimes roughly, to His  power,  His  presence,  His  love.

That is one reason God permits the many difficulties, divisions, differences and disagreement. Jesus tells us in today’s Gospel passage that he did not come to present peace to us  on a silver platter, but that  difficulties would be the price of peace.

Peace demands struggle. The  individual  who seeks peace must struggle against his own inclinations. The  family  seeking peace must give up – painfully – individual likes and dislikes to attain it. The family of God, the  Church, in its search for peace, must go through many differences and disagreements. All these are part of God’s plan to  shake us out of the drowsy condition  that could lead us to spiritual death.

The life and death of Jesus have produced a decisive division in the world. In order to be his disciple, following his example, one must have the  courage to affirm  the truth he believes, and the  heroism to face  the most violent contradiction.

His coming would inevitably mean division; in fact, it did. Over and over again a person has to decide whether he loves his near and dear ones better or Christ more. The essence of Christianity is that  loyalty to Christ has to take precedence over the dearest loyalties of this earth. One must be prepared to count all things as loss for the excellence of Jesus Christ.

How does Jesus do that? By the preaching of the Good News – In the words of the two disciples at Emmaus, “Were our hearts not on fire  when he spoke to us?” and by the Eucharist, our spiritual nourishment. (FREEMAN)