Thursday in the 29th Week of Ordinary Time, October 21, 2021

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.”

“I have come to set the earth on fire, and how I wish it were already blazing!”  The Lord Jesus speaks dramatically and passionately here.  He himself is Fire that the Father has sent to the earth, and he longs to set it ablaze.  Now, he does not mean “the earth” in terms of the planet, but human beings who are formed from the dust of the earth.  He yearns painfully to “blaze” in us, with his love so that we might love him and one another.  In this way, he makes us “children of light” (1 Thessalonians 5, 5).  We should note how he says, “How I wish” it were burning now.  As Fire, he can hardly contain himself, but roars and lashes out with flame as though to increase.  We see this again in his next sentence: “There is a baptism with which I must be baptized, and how great is my anguish until it is accomplished!”  From fire he turns to water.  The Greek word translated as “baptize” may not have the primary meaning we understand today — that is, as referring to the sacrament — but rather as a washing, a pouring on of water, even a purging with water, as fire also purges in its own way.  This pouring of water can be understood as watering crops, so that the faithful, watered by the grace of God, may grow and bring forth fruit — converts.  But we can also understand this as meaning the Sacrament of Baptism, that the Lord is pained until the whole world receives his teaching and is converted.  “How great is my anguish!” the Lord cries.  Literally, he is saying, “How I am confined”, or, “compressed”, or “afflicted” until this is accomplished.  We see what he means in his relentless pursuit of souls up and down Judea and Galilee, with a few excursions into Samaritan and Gentile territory.  He hardly slept and only paused to eat when he was invited to do so by some follower or a curious (or scheming) Pharisee.  The Apostles were reduced to eating the heads of grain as they followed him from town to town, even on the Sabbath.  There was nothing he would not do, no place where he would not go, in order to save a soul.

“Do you think that I have come to establish peace on the earth?”  As he has lived, so he expects his followers to live.  Their zeal for holiness and the spread of the Gospel would disrupt the comfortable routines of worldly people.  They would pose troubling questions to them about their lives and goals.  The effect of a saint on them would cause the people of the world to say, “He is grievous unto us, even to behold: for his life is not like other men’s, and his ways are very different” (Wisdom 2, 15).  If we think about it, the act of gardening or farming is a violent one, for the ground is torn up, fertilizer is put into it, and then seed, and plants not native to that soil grow from it.  This can be understood in the spiritual sense of a human person or of the world: the “tearing up” meaning repentance inspired by the word of the Gospel; grace being poured into the person or the world; the sowing of the “seed” as the full reception and acceptance of the Lord’s teachings; and the growth of the plants as living the holy life while remaining in the world, surrounded by temptations.  “No, I tell you, but rather division.”  The Greek word translated here as “division” might be better translated as “a breaking-up”, since Jesus means here the result of an act of violence, whereas “division” implies a clean separation.  The Lord seems to say that he came in order to cause a breaking, but this can also be understood that his coming inaugurates a breaking, but is not directly causative of it.  That is, the Lord does not break up families, but families break up as a result of some members following him and some rejecting him.

“From now on a household of five will be divided, three against two and two against three.”  The Lord uses an uneven number, five, in order to show the nature of the break.  It is not an even, smooth division, but a jagged one.  A person must do violence against himself in order to be his follower (cf. Matthew 16, 24), and this has ramifications for a family as well as for a society.  Let us imagine if a very large number of people in our society sold their possessions in order to follow Christ, whether as laity or consecrated religious.  Our consumer-based economy would be sorely affected.  But ultimately this would work for the good of souls.  It might lead to a re-humanizing of our economy and society.