Gospel of the Twentieth Sunday in Ordinary Time
49 “I came to cast fire upon the earth; and would that it were already kindled! 50 I have a baptism to be baptized with; and how I am constrained until it is accomplished! 51 Do you think that I have come to give peace on earth? No, I tell you, but rather division; 52 for henceforth in one house there will be five divided, three against two and two against three; 53 they will be divided, father against son and son against father, mother against daughter and daughter against her mother, mother-in-law against her daughter-in-law and daughter-in-law against her mother-in-law” (Lk 12: 49-53).
I – Manifestations of the Divine Master’s Love
The manifestations of Our Lord Jesus Christ’s mercy throughout His public life are both moving and admirable. He never refused to aid an unfortunate person who approached Him for help, performing physical and spiritual cures as never seen before. On one occasion, as He walked along the road that led to the city of Nain, He came across the funeral of a young man who had left his mother, a poor widow, forsaken and alone. Filled with compassion for her in her distressing situation, Jesus brought the young man back to life, returning him to his mother in excellent health, doubtless better than before. On another occasion, ten lepers cried out from a distance, imploring Him to free them of their disease. The Master looked upon them mercifully, and their desired cure was granted, allowing them to return joyfully to life in society. However, even greater were the benefits He worked in souls by forgiving the sins of all repentant transgressors. The miracles were constant and the extent of His favours unfathomable. The Apostle Peter summarized these works by affirming that He “pertransivit benefaciendo—He went about doing good” (Acts 10: 38).
In light of the words filled with commiseration that we have so often heard from the divine lips, the teaching of the Gospel of this Twentieth Sunday in Ordinary Time could awaken a degree of perplexity. At first glance, it seems to conflict with Our Lord’s way of acting recorded in other passages. Could there be a contradiction in Jesus’ ministry? Or do His words about fire, division and the breaking of family ties contain a deeper meaning that demands closer analysis? The text of this Sunday’s Liturgy offers us a special opportunity to understand the real scope of Christ’s perfect teaching and its consequences for our lives.
II – A New Fire is Brought to Earth
49 “I came to cast fire upon the earth; and would that it were already kindled!”
Our Lord makes a strong affirmation in this first verse, declaring that He became incarnate in order to start a fire, and so vehement is His desire to see it ablaze that He awaits this moment with eagerness. Should we take this statement literally? Did He come with a flaming torch, going about inciting a universal conflagration? Obviously not.
On the other hand, we know that the figure of fire appears in Scripture with diverse meanings, usually with a punitive connotation. The fire sent by the Lord to consume the two hundred and fifty who had revolted against Moses was so efficacious that no vestige of the detractors remained (cf. Sir 45: 18-19; Nm 16: 35). With a similar purpose Elijah called fire down from Heaven upon the two captains, each one accompanied by fifty soldiers, and they were all immediately incinerated (cf. 2 Kgs 1: 9-12). Revelation foretells the fire that will be cast upon the earth in the final conflagration to purify it (cf. Rv 20: 9-10). Moreover, references to infernal torments are always accompanied by the image of a specialized fire created by God for this end, which He Himself fuels; an intelligent fire that never dies out.1
The context of this Gospel indicates that the Saviour is not alluding to ancient passages, familiar to His listeners, nor is He referring to the flames of hell. His words, shrouded in mystery, speak of a new fire, previously divulged only in the preaching of St. John the Baptist.
Library of the Monastery of Yuso, San Millán de la Cogolla, (Spain)
Humanity needed purification
The Precursor had solemnly declared to the crowd pressing around him, avid to know if he was the Messiah: “I baptize you with water; but He Who is mightier than I is coming, the thong of Whose sandals I am not worthy to untie; He will baptize you with the Holy Spirit and with fire” (Lk 3: 16). It was the announcement of sacramental Baptism, incomparably more profound, efficacious and perfect than that of penance, and accompanied by a reforming fire.
In fact, before the coming of Our Lord, humanity was pervaded and stained by the effects of original sin, having been enslaved by the disorderly passions. Over time, these evil tendencies had gradually become engrained, with all of the deplorable consequences recorded by history, making purification indispensable. How could society be sanctified under such circumstance? Such a lofty goal could not be achieved through normal efforts or by the practice of natural virtue; a decisive factor coming from a divine initiative was necessary, since man did not have the means to overcome his own wickedness. This was the magnificent remedy that the Redeemer came to bring us.
The fire of divine love
Through the union of the human and divine nature in one Person, and through the infinite merits of the Incarnation, Passion, Death and Resurrection of Our Lord Jesus Christ, a fire came down to earth capable of purifying the swamp in which men were mired: “Jesus came from Heaven to earth to set souls afire, refining them, burning their dross and making them pure silver and gold before God. It is the fire of sanctity and charity; it is the entire system of sanctification that Jesus brought to the world.”2 With the Redemption, we were elevated to an unimaginable spiritual plane, for the possibility of being pleasing to God and participants in His divinity were opened to us. We were convoked to the same perfection as the heavenly Father (cf. Mt 5: 48), and to this end we received the effusion of Christ’s love, which purifies our own love, making it noble and fruitful. It also enables us to overcome sin, which while still bearing its sting, no longer reigns. To the degree that men allow themselves to be imbued with the fire of charity, the obstacles to the precepts of grace are overcome, because nothing can hold back one who loves. Those who wholly embrace this supernatural love are able to perform prodigies, like those accomplished by the great heroes of the Faith.
St. Joan of Arc, for example, dressed in armour, mounted on a horse, led an army and liberated her nation. St. Catherine of Siena, great Doctor of the Church, achieved the Pope’s return to his See of Rome after more than half a century in exile in Avignon, and she counselled the rulers of her time with such wisdom that no one could question the divine inspiration of her words. For both, no law of human prudence proved to be an obstacle. Moved by this ardent fire, they devoted themselves to a supreme cause, confronted the greatest adversities with superhuman courage and changed the course of history.
They were souls possessing the plenitude of charity, which Our Lord symbolized with fire, since a flame attracts, lifts its brilliance heavenward and illuminates. But at the same time, it burns, and in view of this power of combustion, no one would be so reckless as to deem it harmless.
The baptism of Calvary
50 “I have a baptism to be baptized with; and how I am constrained until it is accomplished!”
Emphasizing even further how the spreading of this fire depends on His own impulse, the Master reveals His necessity of undergoing a baptism, in categorical terms: “I have a baptism.” He had already received the baptism of St. John at the beginning of His public life. Of this He had no need, but wanted to partake of it in order to sanctify the waters of the world, among other reasons.3 This makes it clear that He was not referring here to penitential baptism. Above this—and infinitely more precious!—is the sorrowful baptism of blood effected by the torments of the Passion. The respected view of Maldonado sums up the opinion of exegetes in this regard, since Our Lord left the affirmation in somewhat shrouded terms: “Undoubtedly, He calls His Passion and Death a baptism, as all commentators agree […]. So that to be baptized, which is properly to be submerged in water, may be interpreted here as suffering and dying; and baptism as torment, passion and death.”4 Given Christ’s supreme perfection, it is readily seen that this baptism does not result in benefits for Him, Who is God, but rather for humanity.
Why is He constrained until its accomplishment? He is anxious to carry out the Redemption of mankind through this offering, for His infinite love for souls impels Him to purify them as soon as possible and consume human miseries with this fire, transforming men into perfect sons of God. It was the “ardent and generous desire with which, as Redeemer, Jesus wanted to somehow hasten His Passion, due to the fruits of salvation that it would produce for the human race.”5
Library of the Monastery of Yuso, San Millán de la Cogolla, (Spain)
Just as in every detail and utterance of the Saviour’s life, a sublime teaching flows from this passage: Jesus shows us how we should long to see the immediate accomplishment of the good that we are meant to do. As soon as the divine will in our regard becomes clear, we should desire to fulfil it without delay, employing all our efforts, dedication and sacrifices, in order to be an instrument of grace for the salvation of our neighbour. The fire of charity does not admit delays, for these signify a diminishment of fervour. Jesus, motivated only by love for the Father and for us, advances eagerly toward torment, as St. Ambrose highlights: “Such is the Lord’s benevolence that He confesses to having a great desire in His heart, of instilling devotion in us, of consummating perfection in us and undergoing His Passion for our benefit.”6
The generosity of the Heart of Jesus
The infinite generosity of such an offering leads us to consider the benefits received from Christ: He willed to take on flesh, suffer all the vicissitudes of a mortal human nature, such as hunger, cold, thirst, heat, fatigue, injuries… and above all, to receive the baptism of blood. He consummated this holocaust with the goal of repairing for our faults and offering us the purification of all stain from the sin of our first parents, Adam and Eve. He restored us to the state of grace, reintroducing us to intimacy with Him by participation in the divine nature, granting us the privilege of being sons of the Father by adoption and His brothers and coheirs, to enjoy eternity in His company. This affords us a glimpse, albeit an imperfect one, of the extraordinary magnitude of the Sacred Heart of Jesus; a human heart hypostatically united to God, in which there is entire conformity between the love coming from the humanity and that originating in the divinity. They are two loves that coexist in the same Heart; a reality that, for our limited intellect is incomprehensible, unattainable and unfathomable.
After the utmost gift of this Heart, consummated on Calvary, the course of history could clearly no longer carry on as before.
III – A New Era for Humanity
Having concentrated into two extraordinary verses the overflowing love which brought salvation to humanity, in the subsequent ones, Our Lord emphasizes the consequences of adherence to His Person and doctrine. In fact, since the first sin committed by Adam and Eve, a predominant power had established itself over the face of the earth until the Incarnation, which could be designated as the pole of evil. Although the divine promise of the Redemption still held true, and the Creator constantly exercised His solicitous favour over the Jews, there was, among the other peoples of Antiquity, a human consensus for evil that reigned in every setting, for the good lacked the means to carry out endeavours that were adequate to destroy the devil’s empire. Based on this pseudo-harmony produced by sin—a deceptively perfect unity—the infernal powers established the cohesion of evil. It was, in a word, forbidden to be good, and everyone, with rare exception, adapted to the prevailing mentality. Those who practiced good did so almost always secretly, under pain of having their good actions exterminated by an overwhelming impetus if they acquired any significance.
Now, the coming of Christ kindled the fire of divine love on earth and inaugurated the pole of good, with an extraordinary force of expansion. As Fr. Manuel de Tuya notes: “This fire that He spread on earth would demand people to side with Him. He would set many ablaze, and this is the ‘division’ He was bringing, not as an objective, but as a consequence.”7 A radical separation became inevitable, because those who adhere to good restrain the action of those who opt for evil and impede their progress, thus opening a chasm that separates them.
Jesus opposes the tranquillity of disorder
51 “Do you think that I have come to give peace on earth? No, I tell you, but rather division.”
We are faced with one of the most incisive affirmations by Our Lord in the entire Gospel: “I did not come to bring peace.” How is it that the “Prince of Peace” prophesied by Isaiah (9: 6), Who, invoking the presence of the Holy Spirit, would say: “Peace be with you” (Jn 20: 19), proclaim that He did not come to bring it? This is a verse that causes perplexity in Cartesian minds. However, the explanation is simple and profound: His peace does not coincide with that suggested by distorted concepts: “not as the world gives do I give to you” (Jn 14: 27). Authentic peace is the tranquillity of order, St. Augustine teaches.8 The peace rejected by Our Lord is that which is established by souls united in sin, by a complicity that leads the wicked to protect one another and live in apparent union, which is a false harmony based on evil. Dissensions may arise, always stemming from personal and egoistic interests, but in the field of principles they remain in complete agreement.
For example, an adulterer protects his accomplice in order to enjoy their illicit relationship; the members of a band of thieves cooperate while stealing, to more easily seize the goods of others. The apparent peace among them is only the connivance of evil, for the principle of union that brings them together is sin; they collude in an equanimity of disorder in which there is no true peace, because there is no conformity with order. This situation may be compared to the stagnation of a contaminated swamp which is the breeding ground for disease. Even though the waters may be calm, they are not in order, because putrefaction reigns, and maleficent bacteria proliferate in them. This mutual support has its origin in the fact that man is gifted with a strong instinct of sociability and, therefore finds it difficult to practice evil alone, contradicting his own conscience. To break the Law of God, he always seeks a companion who will help him to stifle his internal opposition: the thief desires that others accompany him in the plunder; the impure seek the company of other impure people.
The division inaugurated by Jesus consists of an intransigent censure of this attitude of evil complicity, made, above all, by the upright conduct of virtuous souls and the current of good caused by them. In founding the immortal Church, Our Lord gave to the good a divine power capable of unmasking the error of those who embrace sin, of showing how depraved it is and opposing their dominion. Until the coming of Christ, virtue and the good had a limited capacity. He came to render them omnipotent, making them the deciding factor in history. The separation between the good and the wicked became a much more pronounced reality than before, with a peculiar characteristic: the good, when they are integral, always come out victorious. As Fr. Raniero Cantalamessa emphasizes, “He came to bring peace and unity among the good, which leads to eternal life, and He came to eliminate the false peace and unity, that only serves to appease consciences and lead them to ruin.”9 His peace is the peace of virtue, of the good order of things and of the practice of all the Commandments of the Law of God.
Whoever embraces virtue sows division
52 “For henceforth in one house there will be five divided, three against two and two against three; 53 they will be divided, father against son and son against father, mother against daughter and daughter against her mother, mother-in-law against her daughter-in-law and daughter-in-law against her mother-in-law.”
In showing how the division that He brought was a concrete one, the Divine Master announces ruptures within the bosom of the family, the institution dearest to and most deeply ingrained in the human heart. In this passage, Jesus does not allude to the common discord among members of the same household, but rather to the rejection of those who love Him, by their closest relatives, when the latter close their hearts to the invitation of grace.
Clearly it is not an absolute rule, because when all the members of a family are on the path of holiness, they experience true peace. But if they are not imbued with the flame of divine love, the principal factor of cohesion is absent, as the teaching of St. Ambrose indicates: “If it is necessary to give due honour to parents, then how much more to the Creator of the parents, to Whom you owe thanks for your own parents! And if they do not acknowledge Him in an absolute sense as their Father, how can you acknowledge them? Very truly He did not say one should renounce everything that is dear to us, only that God should be given the first place. […] It is not prohibited to love your parents, but rather to place them before God; because the good things of nature are gifts from the Lord.”10
Since those who live in sin have deeply troubled consciences, dissatisfaction and apprehension, they desire to lead astray or destroy those who denounce their iniquity. This malicious impetus does not even respect the ties of nature, intrinsically so lofty and blessed by God, as we see in the martyrdom of St. Barbara or in the persecution suffered by St. Francis of Assisi, in addition to the testimony of so many other of the blessed. In them, the prediction made in this verse was fulfilled literally, for they were persecuted by their own parents.
The fire of charity that Our Lord brought to earth awakens the enmity of the adepts of pseudo-peace, producing an internal combat in the life of the family. The practice of the virtue of fortitude becomes necessary, and the union touted by those who despise God becomes unacceptable. While some occasions certainly call for prudence and the use of all possible means to obtain from God the eternal salvation of our relatives, this must be done without abandoning the resolution of our Christian convictions, which are worth more than any earthly tie.
IV – Enkindle Again the Fire of Thy Love
Two millennia after this awe-inspiring preaching of the Saviour, today’s Liturgy repeats His invitation, this time directed to each one of us. With the same charity employed in addressing His disciples, Jesus calls us to let ourselves be consumed like a flame of praise and adoration of Him, receiving the sacred fire that He came to bring to the world. Let us open our souls to this regenerating blaze that burns away egoism, heals ills, raises minds to the desire for heavenly things and overcomes the barriers raised by lack of confidence, faith and courage. The least correspondence to this love on our part will be sufficient to work wonders, to vanquish the powers of darkness and consolidate the pole of good. And when the adverse winds of division blow, let us remember that Jesus already proclaimed it and will not fail to give us the strength for victory, because the wicked cannot triumph over the fire of integrity, innocence and radicality—in a word, of sanctity—in the good.
With sorrow, we see that contemporary humanity has plunged into a bottomless abyss of sin and, more than ever before, needs purification. The seriousness of the offences committed against God and the risk at which souls are placing their eternal salvation shows the indifference of many toward the salvific message of the Gospel. At this juncture it is fitting to ask a question, and with it make an examination of conscience: to what degree have we collaborated in the reversal of this situation? How generous have we been in view of this state of things, whose only solution is found in a complete commitment of our lives to Christ, which we should make with holy restiveness?
Our Lady offers us an extraordinary example of a detached love filled with fervour. She was consumed by charity, concerning herself with the state of the world, and with the redemption of souls that were being lost, desiring to cooperate in the conversion of humanity. Considering herself nothing, she burned with zeal and was, for this reason, visited by the Archangel St. Gabriel, who announced to her the reward for her fire of love: the Incarnation of the Second Person of the Blessed Trinity in her womb.
in the 1990s
As Prof. Plinio Corrêa de Oliveira comments, “the principal joy of Our Lord during His earthly life was found in a burning lamp in the house of Nazareth: the Wise and Immaculate Heart of Mary, whose love exceeds that of all men who ever were, are, and will be until the end of time.”11 Let us ask the Blessed Virgin to transmit to us a spark of the burning charity of her Heart, so that her Divine Son can use us as faithful instruments in the spreading of this purifying fire over the entire face of the earth. ◊
Notes
1 In this regard, Garrigou-Lagrange states: “St. Thomas (C. Gentiles, IV, c.90, IIIa; Suppl., q.70, a.3) and his main commentators assert that the fire of hell receives power from God to torment the reprobate” (GARRIGOU-LAGRANGE, OP, Réginald. O Homem e a Eternidade. Lisboa: Aster, 1959, p.153). See also: ST. THOMAS AQUINAS. Summa Theologiae, Suppl., q.97, a.5, ad 3; a.6, ad 2.
2 GOMÁ Y TOMÁS, Isidro. El Evangelio Explicado, vol. II: Años primero y segundo de las Vida pública de Jesús. Barcelona: Acervo, 1967, p.195.
3 Cf. ST. THOMAS AQUINAS, op. cit., III, q.39, a.1.
4 MALDONADO, SJ, Juan de. Comentarios a los Cuatro Evangelios, vol. II: Evangelios de San Marcos y San Lucas. Madrid: BAC, 1956, p.609.
5 FILLION, Louis-Claude. Vida de Nuestro Señor Jesucristo, vol. II: Vida pública. Madrid: Rialp, 2000, p.385.
6 ST. AMBROSE. Expositio evangelii secundum Lucam, L.VII, n.133. In: Obras, vol. I. Madrid: BAC, 1966, p.413.
7 TUYA, OP, Manuel de. Biblia Comentada, vol. V: Evangelios. Madrid: BAC, 1964, p.855.
8 Cf. ST. AUGUSTINE. De Civitate Dei. L.XIX, c.13, n.1. In: Obras, vol. XVI-XVII. Madrid: BAC, 1958, p.1398.
9 CANTALAMESSA, OFMCap, Raniero. Echad las Redes. Reflexiones sobre los Evangelios. Ciclo C. Valencia: Edicep, 2003, p.279.
10 ST. AMBROSE, op. cit., L.VII, n.136, p.415.
11 CORRÊA DE OLIVEIRA, Plinio. Conference. São Paulo, Apr.7, 1984.