From: Luke 12:49-53

Jesus the Cause of Dissension

(Jesus said to His disciples,) [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 daughter-in-law and
daughter-in-law against her mother-in-law.”

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Commentary:

49-50. In the Bible, fire is often used to describe God’s burning love for men. This
divine love finds its highest expression in the Son of God become man: “God so
loved the world that He gave His only Son” (John 3:16). Jesus voluntarily gave up
His life out of love for us, and “greater love has no man than this, that a man lays
down his life for his friends” (John 15:13).

In these words reported by St. Luke, Jesus Christ reveals His abounding desire
to give His life for love of us. He calls His death a baptism, because from it He
will arise victorious never to die again. Our Baptism is a submersion in Christ’s
death, in which we die to sin and are reborn to the new life of grace: “We were
buried therefore with Him by baptism into death, so that as Christ was raised
from the dead by the glory of the Father, we too might walk in newness of life”
(Romans 6:4).

Through this new life, we Christians should become set on fire in the same way
as Jesus set His disciples on fire: “With the amazing naturalness of the things
of God, the contemplative soul is filled with apostolic zeal. ‘My heart became hot
within me, a fire blazed forth from my thoughts’ (Psalm 38:4). What could this fire
be if not the fire that Christ talks about: ‘I came to cast fire upon the earth, and
would that it were already kindled’ (Luke 12:49). An apostolic fire that acquires
its strength in prayer: there is no better way than this to carry on, throughout the
whole world, the battle of peace to which every Christian is called to fill up what
is lacking in the sufferings of Christ (cf. Colossians 1:24)” (St. J. Escriva, “Christ
Is Passing By”, 120).

51-53. God has come into the world with a message of peace (cf. Luke 2:14) and
reconciliation (cf. Romans 5:11). By resisting, through sin, the redeeming work of
Christ, we become His opponents. Injustice and error lead to division and war. “In-
sofar as men are sinners, the threat of war hangs over them and will so continue
until the coming of Christ; but insofar as they can vanquish sin by coming toge-
ther in charity, violence itself will be vanquished” (Vatican II, “Gaudium Et Spes”,
78).

During His own life on earth, Christ was a sign of contradiction (cf. Luke 2:34).
Our Lord is forewarning His disciples about the contention and division which will
accompany the spread of the Gospel (cf. Luke 6:20-23; Matthew 10:24).

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Source: “The Navarre Bible: Text and Commentaries”. Biblical text from the
Revised Standard Version and New Vulgate. Commentaries by members of
the Faculty of Theology, University of Navarre, Spain.

Published by Four Courts Press, Kill Lane, Blackrock, Co. Dublin, Ireland, and
by Scepter Publishers in the United States.

Scripture readings from the Jerusalem Bible by Darton, Longman & Todd

Readings at Mass

Liturgical Colour: Green.

First reading
Ephesians 3:14-21 ©

This is what I pray, kneeling before the Father, from whom every family, whether spiritual or natural, takes its name:

Out of his infinite glory, may he give you the power through his Spirit for your hidden self to grow strong, so that Christ may live in your hearts through faith, and then, planted in love and built on love, you will with all the saints have strength to grasp the breadth and the length, the height and the depth; until, knowing the love of Christ, which is beyond all knowledge, you are filled with the utter fullness of God.

Glory be to him whose power, working in us, can do infinitely more than we can ask or imagine; glory be to him from generation to generation in the Church and in Christ Jesus for ever and ever. Amen.

Responsorial Psalm
Psalm 32:1-2,4-5,11-12,18-19 ©