20th Sunday, Year C

Dear brothers and sisters, how can we best understand Jesus' exclamation, ‘I have come to bring fire to the earth’? Or his prophecy that he will bring division? After all, there is already so much division in our world. There are wars, there is discord between people. Even church communities do not always agree among themselves.

Today's Gospel is not about the divisions that exist throughout the world. Jesus does not say that He sets people against each other. What Jesus says concerns the divisions that arise because people disagree about who Jesus really is. And those divisions lead not only to conflicts between people, in families. History has seen periods in which countries were divided by conflicts over religion, always intertwined with politics. Even today, as in the war between Russia and Ukraine, diaerent religious views play a role, although here too it remains primarily a matter of political and military decisions. The question of religious freedom is an important one in many countries, including our own. How much space is given to mosques? What about the construction of churches in countries in the Middle East or the Far East? Where is the tolerance to respect each other's religion, as the Second Vatican Council so clearly advocated?

In today's Gospel, Jesus prophesies that these things will happen, that accepting or rejecting his Name will lead to strife and division. And when we see this happening around us, it is good to first examine ourselves. Are we, as Christians, of one mind? Do we continue to forgive each other in the event of a diaerence of opinion, or do we escalate the conflict? And how do we relate to people with a diaerent religion, or no religion, or a dormant religion? We too can be filled with the fire of Jesus.

What does Jesus actually mean by saying that He has come to bring fire? We see fire as something threatening, something that can destroy.

We need only think of the forest fires raging in many places in Southern Europe and elsewhere in the world.

There are two other meanings of fire. First, in the Old Testament book of Malachi, God is described as the fire of a refiner who will purify the people of their iniquity. A refiner's fire is a fire in which material, such as silver, is placed to cleanse and burn away all impurities, so that it becomes pure silver. In this way, the purifying fire that Jesus has come to bring, can transform people into new people, who renounce certain sins and gradually become people with a big heart for many. People who continually seek the closeness of Jesus in prayer and in the sacraments and try to put his gospel of simplicity, healing and togetherness into practice. This does not mean that the diaerences between people need to be denied. But by listening carefully to one another, we can build a better future.

There is another fire, and that is the fire of the Holy Spirit. This fire symbolises the power with which the Holy Spirit brings about change. The fruits of the Holy Spirit are mentioned in St. Paul's letter to the Galatians: love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness and self-control. On the morning of Pentecost, something like tongues of fire appeared to the disciples, filling them with the Holy Spirit and enabling them to speak in foreign languages that people could understand. We must not extinguish that fire, the gifts of prophecy and enthusiasm, as St. Paul wrote to the Christians of Thessalonica. That still applies to us today, brothers and sisters. May the Holy Spirit set our hearts on fire for the mission of Jesus. Amen.