The Purifying Fire of Dividing, Divine Love

A Scriptural Reflection on the Readings for Sunday, August 18, 2013 | Carl E. Olson

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 and the same 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.)