Luke 12: 49-53
Jesus said to his disciples:
“I came to bring fire to the earth, and how I wish it were already kindled! I have a baptism with which to be baptized, and what stress I am under until it is completed! Do you think that I have come to bring peace to the earth? No, I tell you, but rather division! From now on five in one household will be divided, three against two and two against three; they will be divided:
father against son
and son against father,
mother against daughter
and daughter against mother,
mother-in-law against her daughter-in-law
and daughter-in-law against mother-in-law.”
New Revised Standard Version, copyright 1989, by the National Council of the Churches of Christ in the United States of America. Used by permission. All rights reserved. USCCB approved.
Will You Come Alive?
Jesus is sometimes a hard one to follow. But, that’s how it is with prophets – they disturb, upset, agitate, aggravate, and even afflict. And being prophetic sometimes gets them, and their followers, killed.
Jesus the prophet is full of passionate intensity. You can feel the urgency of his message and his zeal for mission in this passage from Luke. Jesus is anxious to get on with it and, in the tradition of the great prophets, getting on with it means bringing the fire of his word to the land, and division to the homes and villages of the people who hear him. In the aftermath of this fire, some will follow him, some will turn away, and some will plot to kill him.
What will you do? Are you willing to let Jesus’ passionate intensity move you to turn from the idols of this world – power, wealth, status, and the adulation of others – to the self-sacrificing work of being Christ’s hands and feet in the world? Will you let Jesus set you on fire and come alive for his message and his mission? Will you help Jesus set the world on fire?
—Bill Lipscomb is a spiritual director with the Ignatian Spirituality Center and the Church of the Gesu in Milwaukee, Wisconsin. Bill is a graduate of the Seminars in Ignatian Formation program of the Midwest Jesuits. Bill serves as a board member for the Ignatian Spirituality Project and as a spiritual reflector for the Ignatian Volunteer Corps.
Prayer
Lord, enfold me in the depths of your heart; and there hold me, refine me, purge, and set me on fire, raise me aloft, until my own self knows utter annihilation.
—Pierre Teilhard de Chardin, SJ
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