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A number of years ago, I had the opportunity to hike in Yosemite and Kings Canyon National Parks in California. One of the things I learned about the forests there was the important role fire plays in the health of the ecosystem. For a while, the national parks tried to prevent and suppress all fires, seeing them only as a destructive threat. In time, they came to understand that while fire had to be carefully managed and respected, it played a crucial role in making sure these forests remained healthy and primed for new life.
I saw this as I walked through a number of areas that had recently burned. Although there was the unmistakable scar of charred trees and ash, there were also thousands of new saplings sprouting up because of the rich soil and the abundant sunlight. New life, rising right out of the ashes! I also learned that the majestic sequoia need fire to release their seeds.
In both cases, fire is necessary, even as it destroys much of the forest. Without it, the long term good of the area would suffer and the longer it is suppressed, the worse it will be when it finally breaks out. Fire prepares the way for new, healthy trees to replace the ones that have reached the end of their life cycle and might be diseased. The flames also clear the needles, branches and other refuse off the forest floor and turns it from a stifling mess to a fertile bed for new saplings to spring up.
Today’s readings point us toward a spiritual fire that does something similar. In a shout-out to pyro’s everywhere, Jesus exclaims that he has come to set the world on fire and he wishes, (I love the word he uses) that it was already blazing! Not flickering, not a controlled burn, or a soft flame, but blazing!! Jesus goes on to explain the power of this fire. It is a force that will strengthen, cleanse, and prepare the way for new life. The teaching of Jesus also has the potential to divide even the most fundamental family relationships, depending on where they fall in terms of the gospel message.
I think it is helpful to point out some common mistakes we make when we hear this passage. The goal of the fire Jesus desires is not to cause fights between husband and wife, mother and daughter, Father and son, and anyone else near and dear to us; he does not delight in division. Jesus loves unity in the family and among people. But that unity can never come at the expense of truth. Whenever any of us try to achieve community and unity by compromising truth and distorting the teachings of Jesus, we only end up with an uneasy truce that will either dissolve over the next argument or require us to compromise our beliefs sometime soon in the near future when the next controversy arises.
Jesus’ prediction of discord and division on account of his preaching is not permission to be a jerk. Our lord is not telling us to go and pick fights with the people around us. Rather, he is warning us that to live his words, to follow him, will purify us and our relationships. And even those relationships most sacred to humanity may not be spared if the people closest to us choose to have other priorities ahead of the gospel.
Last of all, Jesus is not telling us to write off people who fundamentally differ with our creed. Even though the pain and separation of belief may be massive, we should always continue reaching out to bring them back, without ever watering down the truth or compromising key elements of our faith. Jesus’ desire for fire is not permission to become an island and reject anyone who differs with us!
Being on fire for love of God will cause conflicts in our lives, even with the people we love the most. And when we encounter these conflicts, the resistance of those who don’t agree with the gospel, we have to make a decision: Do we change our tune, be silent, or stick with what we believe?
Take Jeremiah in the first reading. He was a prophet given one of the most difficult jobs in all of the Old Testament. He was to warn the people of God that they would soon be invaded by a foreign power, the temple destroyed, many would die and the rest would be enslaved and shipped off to another land. Not surprisingly, the people didn’t like his message and instead of hearing what he was saying and repenting and asking for God’s mercy, they tried to get rid of the messenger by throwing him in a cistern. They resisted the fire of God’s purification, painful though it would be, and as a result they were destroyed. Jeremiah, on the other hand, stayed true to his message from God, endured many sufferings and insults but is now venerated as a saint in heaven. In the second reading, the Author of the letter to the Hebrews reminds the early church that they are surrounded by a cloud of witnesses, the martyrs, who have already given their lives for the gospel. He also gently tells them to stop complaining about the sufferings they are encountering, since they have not yet resisted to the point of shedding blood. This is a timely reminder to you and me, who are often afraid to witness to Jesus. Most often, the only cost will be something minor like embarrassment or being shunned; nothing close to the shedding of our blood!
As Catholics, we are asked to keep the fire of Christ blazing in the world until he returns. We are called to promote and defend the truth as revealed by God and our human nature, unpopular truths that mostly seem to center around marriage, human sexuality, and the dignity of the human person. The truths of God that often divide families in our time are things like marriage cannot be defined as anything other than between a man and a woman, that our human sexuality is a gift rather than a commodity to be bought and sold nor is it a subjective identity that can be reconstructed any which way. We are called to defend the truth that every child has a right to be born without exception, that scientific research is not a god but must respect moral principles, never using or destroying human beings under the lie that it is for a greater good, and finally that contraception is something which corrupts married love rather than enhancing it. We are asked to be a voice for the voiceless, agents of justice and mercy in a world that often only cares about the bottom line and who it deems useful or worthy.
If you haven’t noticed already, Catholics are charged with defending and promoting some pretty unpopular truths. People accuse us of being intolerant, hateful, evil, out-of-touch, and many other words I can’t say here in church. But Jesus knew this would happen and this is why he warned his apostles to be ready for pushback even from the folks they loved the most. To authentically live out our faith, we will at times be like Jeremiah: misunderstood, hated, cast out, and maligned.
So the question posed to us is this, “are we ready for this purification? Are we willing to endure the flame of God’s love which will burn away fear, selfishness, cowardice, and laziness? To be truly and fully alive in our catholic faith, we must undergo the fire of God’s purification. If we run from it, if we try to make our faith something that offends no one by watering it down, we will be like the alpine forest without a fire. Our souls will not experience the cleansing power of God or the new life that comes with it.
May we open our hearts to the fire of God’s love, that it might be blazing within us. Let us pray for the courage of Jeremiah to stand strong in the midst of rejection. Finally, let us not fear God’s purification because it will always lead to growth, new life, and eternal happiness, not simply for ourselves but also for many others!
