20th Sunday of Ordinary Time

"I have come to cast fire upon the earth” (Luke 12:49)  In other words, I have come down from the highest heaven and appeared to men and women through the mystery of the incarnation in order to light the fire of divine love in human hearts.

“And how I wish it were already ablaze!” (Luke 12:49)   How I wish it were already kindled, fanned into flame by the Holy Spirit, and leaping forth in good works.

Christ foretells that he will suffer death on a cross before the human race is inflamed by the fire of this love; for it was by his most holy passion that he won so great a gift for humankind, and it is chiefly the recollection of his passion that kindles the flame of love in Christian hearts.

“There is a baptism which I must undergo” (Luke 12:50).  By divine decree there remains for me the duty of receiving a baptism of blood, that is, of being bathed, soaked upon the cross not in water but in my own blood poured out to redeem the whole world.

“And what constraint I am under until that has been achieved” (Luke 12:50) — until my passion is love and I say: It is accomplished. For Christ was impelled incessantly  by the love within him.

The way to attain the perfection of divine love is then stated. “Do you think that I have come to bring peace on earth?” (Luke 12:51)  In other words: Do not imagine that I have come to offer people a sensual, worldly, and unruly peace that will enable them to be united in their vices and achieve earthly prosperity.

“No, I tell you, I have not come to offer that kind of peace, but rather division” (Luke 12:51) — a good, healthy kind of division, physical as well as spiritual.

Love for God and desire for inner peace will set those who believe in me at odds with wicked men and women, and make them part company with those who would turn them from their course of spiritual progress and from the purity of divine love, or who attempt to hinder them.

Good, interior, spiritual peace consists in the repose of the mind in God, and in a rightly ordered harmony. To bestow this peace was the chief reason for Christ's coming. This inner peace flows from love.

It is an unassailable joy of the mind in God, and it is called peace of heart. It is the beginning and a kind of foretaste of the peace of the saints in heaven — the peace of eternity.

Denis the Carthusian, 1408-1471

Here is my heart, dear Lord;

please set it ablaze with the fire of your love!