Thursday in the 29th Sunday of Ordinary Time, October 26, 2023

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.”

St. Luke sets this teaching of the Lord at the end of his larger teaching on rejecting the teaching of the Pharisees, trusting in God during subsequent persecution from them, and on the judgment to come when he returns.  Some of the Fathers saw no connection between the verses which make up today’s Gospel Reading and those that came before and said that the Lord spoke them at another time and place.  On the other hand we can see them as an eruption of the Lord’s zeal for souls, that he cannot wait until he undertakes those actions by which he will save his elect.

“I have come to set the earth on fire.”  Literally, from the Greek: “I have come to cast fire on the earth.”  Many of the Fathers interpreted this “fire” as the Holy Spirit, so that the Lord was saying that he could barely constrain himself until the time came for sending forth the Holy Spirit upon his Apostles and disciples.  But the early Father Tertullian bids us compare this verse with Matthew 10, 34: “Do not think that I came to send peace upon earth: I came not to send peace, but the sword.”  “Fire”, then, is “the sword”, which Tertullian interprets as persecution.  Tertullian thinks persecution, that the Lord permits a future persecution of his disciples, especially since he says, in the verse immediately following, “I have a baptism with which I must be baptized”, clearly referring to the his Passion and Death.  As if to say: “I forewarn you of this future persecution.  Learn from my example how to be patient and to bear it well.”  It is by tribulation and persecution, which we all suffer but as Christians particularly, that the soul is tried and either becomes stronger in faith or loses it entirely: “For he that has, to him shall be given, and he shall abound: but he that has not, from him shall be taken away that also which he has” (Matthew 13, 12).  We might wonder about the Lord’s choice of description of his Passion and Death as “baptism”, but baptism, in the early days of the Church as well as in the baptism of John, entailed being completely submerged in river water, signifying death, while the raising up out of the water signified life.  “How great is my anguish until it is accomplished!”  The Lord struggles to contain himself in his yearning for the salvation of souls.

“Do you think that I have come to establish peace on the earth?”  That is, the messiah taught by the Pharisees to be expected was to overthrow Roman rule, defeat all of the enemies of the Jews, restore the rule of the house of David, and rule in peace.  Jesus explicitly rejects that he has come into the world to do this.  “No, I tell you, but rather division.”  St. Matthew recalls him saying, “I came not to send peace, but the sword” (Matthew 10, 34), implying a violent rending, which is what the Greek word translated as “separation” actually means.  “From now on a household of five will be divided.”  The rending which the Lord came to bring into the world, that is, his offer of love and life in him, divides even members of families against each other, for in order to receive and experience the Lord’s love we must love him above all things, whether they are property, wealth, popularity, power, pleasure, or the expectations of other people.  God must come first.  This is a very difficult proposition to accept, for many people.  They do not want to serve, they want to be served.  Those who do not join their way of life seem to them to oppose them.  Sometimes violence results.  This occurs on civil levels as well as personal levels so that those in power feel threatened by those who believe in God and follow his commandments, and results in persecution of different kinds.

“Behold you are fair, O my love, behold you are fair” (Song of Songs 1, 4).  What does God see in us that he virtually pants with anticipation for our presence with him in heaven?  For none of us is so proud that we cannot say, “I am a lily of the valley” (Song of Songs 2, 1), very ordinary, nothing to look at.  Before God we are less than the dust of our streets is to us, and yet to God we are worth the price of the Blood of his only Begotten Son.  Let us consider he deeply we are treasured by Almighty God so that we can begin to understand the true meaning of his Son’s Passion and Death.