20th Sunday in Ordinary Time 2025
Jeremiah 38:4-6, 8-10 Hebrews 12:1-4 Luke 12:49-53
The life of a disciple of Jesus is full of contradictions! The Gospel Reading of today’s Mass must be one the most difficult passages of Scripture to understand but we are assured that by our Faith that if we keep ‘running steadily in the race that we have started’ as prompted by the letter to the Hebrews we will find ‘joy in the future’
From the beginning of His ministry on earth Jesus had standards that contradicted the commonly held beliefs and practices of the time. Think those he chose as his apostles: simple fishermen, tax collectors and sinners. They were to be the backbone of building up theKingdom of Heaven on Earth.
From the beginning it seems to have been the same. Jeremiah, the prophet of today’s 1st Reading was merely a youth, inarticulate and afraid and regarded as a ‘mad man’, yet God sends him to be a sign to a very stringent community, to preach to them and teach them. We learn from Jeremiah that serving God and doing God’s will is a virtue in itself whether people approve or not and whether there is any satisfaction or consolation.
So, Jesus came to ‘bring fire on earth’. Fire can mean different things: fire can destroy, fire can give light and heat. The fire that Jesus brings is ‘the light of divine love to people’s hearts’. The disciples on the road to Emmaus wondered ‘were not our hearts burning within us while he was talking to us on the road’ (Lk 24:32) Also in today’s Gospel Jesus seems to be setting up another contradiction – He speaks of His Baptism. The fire on earth and the waters of Baptism must surely operate in opposite ways! But the Baptism Jesus speaks of is His death and that brings up another contradiction because we know that from His Death came Resurrection and New Life.
Of course we know that our lives are made up of positives and negatives and what we perceive as good and evil. But we must be patient, realistic and balanced. The sadness of leaving is always balanced by the joy of arriving, night will, inevitably, lead to day and the seed must go into the ground and die before we have new life and growth. John the Baptist teaches us about balance and gives us the example of his life ‘preparing the way for the Lord’: ‘He must increase but I must decrease’ (John 3:30).
The contradiction that strikes us so forcibly today is that Jesus came to teach of God’s love and reiterate the commandments of Moses, and yet He speaks of the fire of division and even the breakup of families. Of course, Jesus does not encourage differences or negative perceptions in families or communities. The Gospels call us to focus on life in God and what Jesus come to preach – Love of God and Love of neighbour.
St Paul expresses what life in God is like: ‘Always, wherever we may be, we carry with us in our body the death of Jesus, so that the life of Jesus, too, may always be seen in our body. Indeed, while we are still alive, we are consigned to our death every day, for the sake of Jesus, so that in our mortal flesh the life of Jesus, too, may be openly shown’ (2 Cor 4:10-11)
Again, St John of the Cross may help us as we struggle with today’s Gospel: ‘Do not be satisfied with what you understand about God. Nourish yourself with what you do not understand …. The less one understands, the closer one gets to Him’