20 Sunday C Set the earth on fire

Set the earth on fire

Jesus says to us in today’s Gospel: “I have come to set the earth on fire, and how I wish it were already blazing.” In the Bible, fire is often used to describe God’s burning love for men. This divine love is what made the Word become man: “God so loved the world that he gave his only Son”. Jesus voluntarily gave up his life on the Cross: “Greater love has no man than this, that a man lays down his life for his friends”. We experience personally his love in the Eucharist, when we meet him in the bread of life. Saint Teresa of Jesus was travelling through Spain to set up a new convent. It was January, very cold, and it was raining. She was travelling in a cart, the roads were full of mud, and she was feeling sick. She complained to Jesus. He told her: “Teresa don’t worry about the cold; I am the real heat.”

Out of the three theological virtues, only charity remains in the other life. Faith is the door, hope helps us to go through, but love is what we find on the other side. Love remains for ever. Our love of God is a reflection of the love he has for us. When we die we are going to experience fully the fire of the love of God. Here on earth we are not ready to withstand it. This is why God doesn’t normally appears to us. We might disappear. We need a transformation, a renovation actualised through grace and our struggle. Benedict XVI says that the same fire of the love of God, consumes people in hell, purifies people in purgatory, and inflames people in heaven.

For a fire to last it has to be looked after, otherwise it is extinguished. It needs fuel to be added constantly. The same happens with any human love. If you take the other person for granted, if you don’t respect each other, the flame normally dies. For us to maintain our love of God, we need every day to burn a bit of our selfishness, a bit of our pride, of our vanity, of our sensuality. Our little fire has to grow, until it becomes a tremendous bush fire, that burns everything that is in its path. This is why the coming of Jesus is a cause of dissension. During his own life on earth, Christ was a source of contradictions. This fire of his love is infinite, all powerful. You cannot be indifferent in front of it. This fire has an important quality: it cannot be contained, it spreads everywhere. We can check the purity of our love by seeing how it inflames others. This is what the saints have done: set others ablaze.

We are constantly reminded that God is love, that his fire is everlastingly maintained. He has loved us first; we are here because of his love for us. The Lord wants us to respond, to have the fire of his love in our hearts, to be fully aflame. He loves each one of us with a personal love; we are all unique in his eyes. Because our soul is immortal, in a way, God cannot forget about us; he has never ceased to love us, to help us, to protect us. God loves us with an unconditional love, with no strings attached.

The Cure of Ars used to say that “to be holy, you need to be mad.” Saint Josemaria said of himself: “I am mad, from the love of God.” Jesus’ relatives called him mad when they didn’t understand him. On Pentecost day, people thought the apostles were drunk, after being filled with the Holy Spirit. When Saint Paul explained his conversion to king Agrippa, Festus called him mad. Saint Francis was called “the mad man of Assisi.” The holier you are, the more people will think you are ready to be locked up in a psychiatric hospital. We say that love is crazy, that out of love people do amazing things. We cannot forget that God is crazy for us. We should think about what helps us to love him more. If we feel cold in front of God, we can ask Mary our Mother, to kindle the embers of our

[e-mail]