The Fire of Love Christ Comes to Ignite, 29th Thursday (II), October 22, 2020

Fr. Roger J. Landry
Sacred Heart Convent of the Sisters of Life, Manhattan
Thursday of the 29th Week in Ordinary Time, Year II
Memorial of Pope St. John Paul II
October 22, 2020
Eph 3:14-21, Ps 33, Lk 12:49-53

To listen to an audio recording of today’s homily, please click below: 

The following points were attempted in the homily: 

• Today in the first reading, St. Paul prostrates himself before God the Father in prayer begging him to grant the Christians in Ephesus and us to send the Holy Spirit to strengthen us in our inner self — strengthen us in mind, will and conscience — to help us allow Christ his Son to dwell in our hearts, and, rooted in love, to have the courage to understand “the breadth and length and height and depth [of] the love of Christ that surpasses knowledge” and “be filled with all the fullness of God.” Several early saints interpreted the breath, length, height and depth as the dimensions of the Cross, which is fundamentally not a sign of pain but of the unbelievable love of Christ that surpasses all knowledge that bore that pain for love of us. St. Paul was praying to the Father to raise us as his children by the Holy Spirit to be strengthened by the Cross, to allow Christ his Son to abide in us and to help us to understand that cruciform dimensions of the Christian life so as to open ourselves to the fullness of the God of love. It’s an extraordinary prayer, begging for a fullness St. Paul himself had already experienced when he himself admitted he had been crucified with Christ and the life he was living in the flesh he was living by faith in the Son of God who loved him and died for him, a fullness he called “God’s power and wisdom.”
• That prayer for us to be filled with the fullness of the love of Christ is an echo of the prayer Jesus makes in the Gospel, when he speaks about the fire he had come to earth to ignite, and links that to “the baptism with which [he] must be baptized,” which is the baptism of blood on the Cross. He said he was in “anguish” until that baptism be accomplished and that fire begin blazing. His love on the Cross is meant to be a fire of love that is meant to light the world ablaze, the type of love that will transform and strengthen us within. It’s a living flame that will eventually unite — as a flame does all that it consumes— all people in the love of the Father who sent his Son to form a loving family. That union will happen only when people allow themselves to be “burned” and “transformed” by Christ’s love. Many are afraid of the fire, afraid of zeal. That’s why Jesus says that he has come not to “bring peace but division,” because he and the fire of his love would be a sign of contradiction dividing even family members. This is not because Christ is a divider. He is the Prince of Peace who told us during the first Mass that he was leaving and giving us his peace. But when someone in a family opts for Christ, others who don’t want to give God his due or want to be in God’s place get jealous and angry, and that’s what divides. Sin divides. The fire of Christ’s love is opposed by the coldness of a heart that doesn’t love God and others. Dante depicts Hell not as fire — based on the “fire of Gehenna,” the valley where trash was burned — but as ice-cold. The division that flows from opposition to Christ and the fire of his love was true in the early Church. Often when Jews converted to Christianity, they were disowned by their family. Still today when a Muslim converts to Christianity in Pakistan and various other fundamentalist Muslim countries, or a Hindu converts in certain fundamentalist areas in India, a contract is put out on them, and most often by the members of his or her own family. There are those who find the all-consuming fire of Christ’s love a threat and the sinful reaction to other’s coming alive in love does divide. But the love of Christ burning in the family is able to forgive and to heal, so that all members of the family, God-willing, will grow stronger in faith, allow Christ to remain in their home, and come to the celestial home of the Father from whom every family on earth takes its name.
• Today the Church celebrates the memorial of St. John Paul II. He was someone who knew, lived and preached about the “breadth and length and height and depth” of the “love of Christ that surpasses knowledge” and was filled with the fullness of God’s holiness. He was someone whom Jesus had ignited with love who then crisscrossed the world in order to spread that love. When he spoke about the fire that Jesus wanted to ignite in each of us, he always personalized it in the Holy Spirit. “During [Jesus’] life and earthly mission,” he said in a Catechesis, Jesus “directed himself with his whole strength toward this baptism [of blood on Calvary], as he himself said: ‘I have come to light a fire on the earth. How I wish the blaze were ignited! I have a baptism to receive. What anguish I feel till it is over!’ (Lk 12:49-50). The Holy Spirit is the saving ‘fire’ that  brings about that sacrifice.” He said elsewhere, in commenting on how the Holy Spirit came down as tongues of fire on Pentecost, “Fire is always present in the manifestations of God in the Old Testament. We see this in the covenant between God and Abraham (cf. Gen 15:17); likewise when God revealed himself to Moses in the burning bush which was not consumed (cf. Ex 3:2); again, in the columns of fire which guided the people of Israel by night through the desert (cf. Ex 13:21-22). Fire is present particularly in the manifestation of God on Mount Sinai (cf. Ex 19:18), and also in the eschatological theophanies described by the prophets (cf. Is 4:5; 64:1; Dan 7:9 etc.). Fire, therefore, symbolizes the presence of God. On several occasions Sacred Scripture states that ‘our God is a consuming fire’ (Heb 12:29; Dt 4:24; 9:3). In the rites of holocaust the destruction of the thing offered was of less importance than the sweet perfume which symbolized the raising up of the offering to God, while fire, also called the ‘minister of God’ (cf. Ps 104:4) symbolized man’s purification from sin, just as silver is refined and gold is tested in the fire (cf. Zech 13:8-9).  If fire symbolizes God’s presence, the tongues of fire distributed and resting on [the apostles’] heads seem to indicate the ‘descent’ of God the Holy Spirit on those present, the gift of himself to each of them to prepare them for their mission.” John the Baptist had announced about Jesus at the Jordan, “He will baptize you with the Holy Spirit and with fire” (Mt 3:11; cf. Lk 3:16) and that is precisely what Jesus did on Pentecost with the Apostles and seeks to do with each of us. John Paul II said, “What Christ himself promised when he said that he had come to cast fire on the earth (cf. Lk 12:49) is fulfilled, while the Book of Revelation would say of him that his eyes are blazing like a fire (cf. Rev 1:14; 2:18; 19-12). Thus it is clear that the Holy Spirit is represented by the fire (cf. Acts 2:3). All this happens in the paschal mystery, when Christ ‘received the baptism with which he himself was to be baptized’ (cf. Mk 10:38) in the sacrifice on the cross, and in the mystery of Pentecost, when the risen and glorified Christ pours his Spirit on the apostles and on the Church.” Today we pray through St. John Paul II’s intercession that we may cooperate with that saving fire as well as he did so that we may comprehend with him and all the saints the breadth, length, height and depth of Christ’s burning heart on Calvary.
• We receive Christ’s holy fire each Mass, as Christ seeks to make our hearts burn and, as St. Ephrem used to proclaim in the early Church, when we consume the host we’re consuming “Spirit and Fire.” In the Eucharist, we enter into Christ’s passion, and Christ seeks to strengthen us, and comes to remain in us, so that we may experience in this world a little of the fullness with which he wishes to fill us forever.

The readings for today’s Mass were: 

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