Twentieth Sunday of the year

Jer. 38:1-2, 4-6, 8-10; Heb. 12:1-4; Luke. 12:49-53

 

The Church is the external expression of the Kingdom. It needs deep insight and grace to accept his invitation of Jesus.  The recognition and faith bring us closer to Jesus and to his Eucharistic banquet. 

Christ revealed his desire to give his life for us and describes it as a “baptism”; for he will rise victorious over sin and death and will never die again. In our baptism, we are submerged into his death and by it we die to sin and are reborn to a life of grace.

The Readings of today invite us to consider the struggle and difficulty inherent in being a Christian. The path of following Christ is one of contradiction and difficulty in every time and place, because we are living without complete authenticity as a follower of Christ.

 The passage from the prophet Jeremiah in the first reading gives a glimpse of his sufferings in the days before Jerusalem was conquered. God had given him a message for the king that was sadly disregarded and tragedy would follow with the fall of Jerusalem and the subsequent deportation of the Israelites to Babylon for two generations. Jeremiah, like many of the prophets was frequently persecuted during his lifetime.

 Our second reading from the letter to the Hebrews hints at the type of ‘fire’ that Jesus hopes to ignite on the earth. The Letter retells the early Christians of what an authentic Christian life consists in, and that even Jesus had to endure opposition and suffering to be faithful to the will of his heavenly Father.

The author reminds the community not to lose sight of Jesus, to remain steadfast, and not to become discouraged in their commitments to his teaching, promising that through faithfulness divine reward will be granted. 

 In today’s gospel, Jesus the Prince of peace invites his disciples, to a holy war against sin and evil forces.  The message of Jesus brings love, compassion, harmony, peace. 

 The saying that Jesus has come to set the earth on fire, and bring division instead of peace, has been understood in several ways by Christians and non-Christians. Fire is the sign of purification.

John had promised that Jesus would baptize with Holy Spirit and fire.   Fire is symbol of Holy Spirit and His actions of being a consuming fire as God.

 The Spirit of Jesus is given to all freely who choose to follow him through baptism. In this sense, the fire of Jesus that lives in each of us helps to mould us and shape us into what we are meant to become, a heat that warms our hearts encouraging us to continue the work of Jesus today.

Jesus came into the world as a person of peace.  He came to a world which prefers darkness to light, a world that is inhabited by people who prefer lies to truth. 

When Jesus said he has not come to bring peace, he is referring to the peace that was invoked in his time; the peace that was the product of war and compromise; where injustice and oppression prevailed.  As a matter of fact, Jesus is not opposed to peace.  Instead, Jesus is the prince of peace; he came to establish peace that comes from forgiveness.

 On the other hand, when he said that he had come to bring division, he was talking about the division that his message would bring between those who accept it and those who reject it; between the righteous and unrighteous. Rather than advocating violence, Jesus was warning his disciples that they would encounter violence from those unwilling to accept the Truth.

 Therefore, the holy war to which Christ calls us is not a war against people of certain nationalities or cultures, creeds or ideologies, but a war in which we first have to identify the forces for evil in our own persons and in the persons of those who are dear to us (father, son, mother, daughter, mother-in-law, daughter-in-law) and then declare and the uncompromising war against these forces.

 In so doing, Jesus redefines family as those who follow the same divine purpose and no longer those who share the same name or address. 

This is what Jesus meant when he said: “Whoever is not with me is against me, and whoever does not gather with me scatters”.

As disciples, our commitment is to follow Jesus and to enter fully into his struggle to repair the world and to restore ourselves and others to the right relationships.

 - @Avinash Bitra OFM Cap.