In this hot, humid August, let’s think Christmas. Think of the angelic choir announcing the birth of Jesus: “Glory to God in the highest and peace to his people on earth.” At Christmas we love to hear the words of the prophet Isaiah put to the music of Handel: “For unto us a child is born, unto us a Son is given…and his name shall be called…the Prince of Peace.” Yet today, Our Lord tells us that his coming would bring not peace but division—even within families. Is this Our Lord’s good news for our fractured and divided society? Is he or is he not the Prince of Peace? How are we to understand this disconcerting Gospel passage?
The Lord is indeed the Prince of Peace, but he reminds us that one of the consequences of following him is that divisions will surely follow. We can expect to be out of favor and even unpopular. Ask Jeremiah! Today we hear of his fate—being lowered into a muddy cistern for his fidelity! Discipleship involves going against current trends and the mentality of the culture.
Years before being elected Pope, Cardinal Ratzinger (Benedict XVI) said in an interview: “Today more than ever the Christian must be aware that he belongs to a minority and that he is in opposition to everything that appears good, obvious, and logical to the spirit of the world…Among the most urgent tasks facing Christians is that of regaining the capacity to oppose many developments of the surrounding culture. We have lost the sense that Christians cannot live just like everybody else.”
But isn’t that what we try to do? We want to blend in so that we don’t appear out of date, old fashioned, or a relic of the past. As a result, we accommodate ourselves to whatever is popular at the moment. We embrace ideas that are not aligned with the Gospel, or we remain silent for fear of being “out of sync.” We fear standing out there as different and apart from others.
In this passage, the Lord uses the image of fire—not in the sense of destruction but in the sense of purification or refinement. Our challenge is to purify our lives of everything that is not in conformity with the Gospel.
It involves “burning away” and putting to death those behaviors and habits that are detrimental to our spiritual life, so that we become not only a better person but a new person.
Fire also symbolizes zeal. When the Holy Spirit came upon the apostles at Pentecost in tongues of fire, they were transformed into zealous and courageous witnesses of the Gospel. The fire of the Holy Spirit had burned away their fears and trepidations.
This is the fire that should touch our lives to increase our zeal for the faith, the fire that should intensify our love of God and our neighbor. Can we say we are truly zealous for the Faith? The last thing we desire in the summer is to draw near to fire. But we should never be afraid of the fire of the Holy Spirit.
Our Lord is indeed the Prince of Peace, but it is not the peace that is devised or proposed by the world. It is not a peace that is the absence of difficulties or the avoidance of life’s crosses. It is the peace that comes from aligning our lives with the Gospel. It is the peace that comes for being “in sync” with all that God wants of us. It is the peace that comes from the joy of being in friendship with God.
The late Cardinal Basil Hume observed: “The world finds no peace because the world refuses to repent and believe the Good News. The peace of Christ will not, cannot, be imposed on an unwilling world. It must find a home first in human hearts. There has to be a radical change of heart, a deep down conversion, a death to the sinful ways of pride and self-centeredness.”
That is the change that takes place when we are open, when we allow ourselves to be scorched by the fire of the Holy Spirit.
