THE EARTH ON FIRE

THE EARTH ON FIRE

August 14, 2022: A Reflection for the 20th Sunday in Ordinary Time, Yr C

Luke 12:49-53

Jesus said to his disciples: “I have come to set the earth on fire, and how I wish it were already blazing.” Lk 12:49

There is Fire – and there is fire. All creation bears within it the Fire of the Presence of God. It is the fire with which God endowed it with existence and which holds it in being. If the Holy Fire which burns within each of us and all that God has made could die out, we would all cease to exist. Every person, every thing is a burning bush, bearing within its center a blaze of Holy Presence.

Jesus speaks in today’s gospel about setting the earth ablaze, starting a fire that spreads from person to person and covers the earth. But it requires a conscious choice on our part. A choice to “reduce ourselves to zero,” to quote Gandhi, and stand humbly before one another in the love of God.

You can see why it would need to be a fire! It is no small undertaking and yet it is the reason why we have been created. To yield ourselves to Fire, God. To let our deepest self be carried in a blaze which reveals to us who we really are. To lose our life in order to gain it.

There is Fire – and there is fire. We were made to burn with one of those two fires: the fire of God, or the other fire, which instead of creating light, plunges into darkness. The fire that is turned in on itself and can’t seem to come to true Light.

We are all a mixture of the two fires if we’re honest. It takes a lifetime for most of us to live habitually in the choice of Christ’s Fire. To be part of the blaze he came to cast on earth. To burn gently with this glorious fire of God’s life-giving love is to fulfill the reason for our existence. Still, it is a choice we have to make anew each day, sometimes moment by moment. But, like the burning bush that burned but was not consumed, will lead us to who we really are.

There is a quote from T.S. Elliot’s The Four Quartets. It is from the last Quartet called Little Gidding and goes like this:

The only hope, or else despair
Lies in the choice of pyre or pyre—
To be redeemed from fire by fire.
We only live, only suspire, consumed by either fire or fire.

We can choose. Come Holy Fire!