Readings:
• Jer 38:4-6, 8-10
• Ps 40:2, 3, 4, 18
• Heb 12:1-4
• Lk 12:49-53
In the summer of 2007, the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith released a document containing “responses to some questions regarding certain aspects of the doctrine of the Church.” It carefully re-articulated some important Catholic teachings about the nature of the Church, meant to help Catholics avoid various “erroneous interpretations which in turn give rise to confusion and doubt.”
Predictably, many media outlets sensationalized the contents of the document and ran headlines such as “Vatican hits ‘wounded’ Christian churches,” as though the teaching “that the Church of Christ subsists in the Catholic Church” is somehow new to the Vatican, the pope, or Catholicism. Of course, it isn’t. Yet that didn’t keep some Catholics from expressing their outrage at the supposed “intolerance” coming from a backwards and “polarizing” Pope Benedict XVI.
One Catholic, in a letter to the editor of the Detroit Free Press, lamented what he described as the “believe-what-we-say-or-leave’” mentality of the Catholic Church. “I hope all of us will start acting more like Jesus…”, he wrote, “simply passing along love, peace and goodness to others.”
That letter writer would do well to read both the document he wrongly criticized and today’s Gospel reading, which describes Jesus explaining that He has “come to set the earth on fire, and how I wish it were already blazing!” This is a reference back to the third chapter of Luke’s Gospel and John the Baptist’s explanation that the Messiah “will baptize you with the Holy Spirit and fire” and that He will burn the chaff “with unquenchable fire” (Lk 3:16-17).
Like the prophet Elijah, who called down fire from heaven to consume his enemies (2 Kgs 1:10-14), the presence of Jesus often caused violence and disturbance—not because He opposed love and peace, but because the destruction of evil and sin demanded a violent, active love. Only through bloodshed and sacrifice will peace be fully established, and then only at the end of time.
Many theologians and authors have tried in recent decades to warp the Gospels and remake Jesus into a sort of mild-mannered self-help guru who never uttered a disturbing word or made a shocking comment. Yet Jesus stated that He would bring division, even among families, setting parents against children. This is painful to consider, but it has often been the case: sometimes the one who enters the family of God must turn his back on father, mother, and siblings.
To take up modern terminology, Jesus came to apply shock therapy to the ailing hearts and souls of those lost in sin. The fire that He gave—and continues to give through His Church and the sacraments—is the burning life and the transforming energy of the Holy Spirit, which consumes what is weak and wanting while purifying and enlightening the minds of those who follow Him.
“As fire transforms into itself everything it touches,” remarks the Catechism, “so the Holy Spirit transforms into the divine life whatever is subjected to his power” (CCC 1127; cf. 696).
That transformation is ultimately an all-or-nothing reality; there is, in fact, a “believe-what-we-say-or-leave” aspect to Catholicism, although it is far better expressed as “believe-what-He-says-or-leave”. Jesus causes division and brings unity for one reason: He is both the scandal that divides and the Savior who unites. The bloody Cross is the scarlet line that separates and a steady tie that binds.
As the Letter to the Hebrews states today, the Cross is shameful to many. But for those who have their eyes fixed on Jesus, the Cross is the ladder to joy and life. The theologian Fr. Hans Urs von Balthasar, in reflecting on martyrdom and the cost of discipleship, once wrote that the “only valid response” to the death of Christ on the Cross “is to be prepared to die for him, and even more, to be dead in him.”
Through that death comes real peace; in that death we experience true and abiding love. Yes indeed, let us start acting more like Jesus!
(This “Opening the Word” originally appeared in a slightly different form in the August 19, 2007, issue of Our Sunday Visitor newspaper.)
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An anomaly that some abhor, that the new dispensation is the purposeful cause of division. In one place he says, O How I wish I could see the flames leap upward. Reminding me of John of the Cross and The Living Flame of Love.
Olson quotes a dead on reality apprehended by Von Balthasar, that we’re all called to crucifixion, and moreso, to be dead in Christ. With little effort we understand that to be dead to oneself means to live in and with Christ.
Essayist Olson touches on the warping of the fiery words of Christ seeking to transform him into a guru. Which is why I disregard the modern film depictions of Christ except for Mel Gibson’s The Passion of the Christ.
Let’s live up to the reality that love, in its essence is a fire that consumes leaving no trace in us of our former self other than love. Each person in their unique manner radiates that love as would an optical prism.
Another grand slam for the editor, thank you Carl.
Amen
Stated elsewhere in Luke 10:16, “whoever rejects you rejects me, and…the one who ‘sent’ me. Pace Balthasar’s “modern Trinitarianism”, the “sending” of the Son and Holy Spirit as “mission” in space and time (Thomistic vs. “economic” Trinity).
The division caused by the rejection of Christ is a rejection of Ultimate Reality- the inner life of the Trinity, in whose life and love we are created to participate through grace.
Douglas Farrow says that the CE designation for A.D. really means “contested era”. Exactly.