Thursday in the 29th Week of Ordinary Time, October 20, 2022

Luke 12, 49-53

Jesus said to his disciples: “I have come to set the earth on fire, and how I wish it were already blazing! There is a baptism with which I must be baptized, and how great is my anguish until it is accomplished! Do you think that I have come to establish peace on the earth? No, I tell you, but rather division. From now on a household of five will be divided, three against two and two against three; a father will be divided against his son and a son against his father, a mother against her daughter and a daughter against her mother, a mother-in-law against her daughter-in-law and a daughter-in-law against her mother-in-law.”

For a Gospel text that illuminates the Lord’s psychology, one need look no further than these verses from St. Luke’s Gospel.  Here the Lord himself speaks and reveals his passionate drive to suffer and die for us so that we might be saved.  His words boil over from the fullness of his heart to show how he burns to complete the mission given him by his Father: “I have come to set the earth on fire, and how I wish it were already blazing! There is a baptism with which I must be baptized, and how great is my anguish until it is accomplished!”  Through his words we can see how anxious he was to come into the world that he could not wait for Joseph and Mary to find a proper house for him to be born in but caused himself to be born rather in a shelter for animals and laid in a trough.  We now understand his zeal to begin his “Father’s business” in staying behind at the Temple when he was twelve.  Likewise, his constant, urgent travel and preaching.  He spared himself not at all, nor any of those who would follow him.  His urgency was fueled by his love for his Father and for us.  

“Do you think that I have come to establish peace on the earth? No, I tell you, but rather division.”  He means for us to act relentlessly for our salvation as well, taking advantage of the graces he won for us on the Cross.  Those who follow him must forsake every consideration but his: “If any man come to me, and hate not his father and mother and wife and children and brethren and sisters, yea and his own life also, he cannot be my disciple” (Luke 14, 26).  Not that we should despise them, but that we must not let anyone or anything slow us from performing God’s will and obeying his commandments.  Because not everyone is willing to put God first, necessarily feelings will get hurt and relationships will suffer.  When the Lord says he comes to bring “division”, he is speaking not of some neat cutting or splitting, but of a rending and tearing, as the Greek has it.  He has come to tear us from the worldly things we once pursued and from people that are not helpful for us.   

Nor does the Lord leave us in doubt that he means this tearing of relationships literally: “From now on a household of five will be divided, three against two and two against three; a father will be divided against his son and a son against his father, a mother against her daughter and a daughter against her mother, a mother-in-law against her daughter-in-law and a daughter-in-law against her mother-in-law.”  The Lord does not mean for us to act with hostility but with love.  The point of our resistance and departure from people close to us who have deliberately chosen to live sinful lives is to show them that God comes first for us, as it should for them.  It is not easy to do this, and so the Lord does speak of this as a “tearing”.  We do it through prayer and by his grace, and always out of our love for him.  

The Lord speaks of setting the earth on fire.  The fire burns the wicked and sets the repentant free.  Our God himself is “a consuming fire” (cf. Hebrews 12, 29).  We pray that we might be on fire with our love for him.