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

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The Assumption

Today we celebrate the feast day of the Assumption of our Mother to heaven. What can we say about what happened on that day? We haven’t got much information. Saint John witnessed it and didn’t tell us anything. John, you told us all about the life of Jesus, with plenty of details, but you didn’t want to tell us about our Lady leaving earth. She is our Mother too, and we would have liked to know more about her. But you preferred to be silent. We needed to know about how Jesus gave his life for us, but we didn’t need to know how our Mother flew up to heaven. It is better for our imagination; we can let it free. It took the Church a long time to declare the dogma, in 1950. Now we can let our imagination fly and accompany her up to heaven.

The apocryphal gospels, those books written by the early Christians to try to fill the gaps, say that the apostles came back to say good bye to our Mother. They say that they came back each in his own cloud, first Saint Peter and then Saint Paul. Maybe John didn’t tell us this because nobody would have believed him. Saint James was already dead and Saint Thomas, as always, arrived late, because he came back all the way from India. We understand why they wanted to be back. We too want to be there to say good bye to our mother.

There is a debate about what happened, if our Lady died or not, before she went up to heaven. She would have liked to follow her Son, and die with him on the cross. But Jesus didn’t want her to endure his horrible death. No son wants his mother to suffer. I don’t think Jesus wanted his mother to die either. God wanted her, body and soul in heaven, without her beautiful body experiencing corruption. That’s why she fell asleep. You could call it a sweet death. That’s how saints normally pass away, falling asleep, in a simple and beautiful manner. You die in the way you live. There is a feast in the East called the Dormition of our Lady, dating from the sixth century. According to tradition she fell asleep and they placed her in a tomb. When Saint Thomas arrived, he wanted to see her, and they found out that the tomb was empty. That is why we don’t have any relics from her body.

How did she fly to heaven? God has his ways of moving people. Most likely it was a transport of love. When love is very intense, it can do things that reason cannot understand. Love is crazy, endures all things, achieves all things. Love can travel through space and time. There is no better means of transport than going through the people we love. Love fired the engines of her soul and lifted her up all the way to heaven.

Tradition says that our Lady’s beauty, which was veiled here on earth so as not to blind human beings, not to drive them crazy, was revealed on her way to heaven, showing her in all her splendour, dazzling angels and saints in all its wonder. They never have seen anybody like that, not even in paradise. The book of Revelation tries to describe her, precisely with the words of Saint John: “A great sign appeared in heaven; a woman clothed with the sun, the moon beneath her feet, and a crown of twelve stars on her head.” I don’t think it is possible to find a better description of our Mother’s countenance. At last Saint John opened his soul and told us a bit about her Assumption.

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Waiting for the Lord

“Gird your loins and light your lamps”, Jesus is telling us today. Fasten your seat belt and start the engine, would be a modern way of saying the same. These are the two attitudes the Gospel is asking us to have. First, be ready for the journey, and then turn on the lights outside, to welcome the guest who is coming. The same expression from the parable of the foolish virgins: the bridegroom is coming, go out to meet him. Come out of yourself and welcome him. He has dropped us here and he is coming to pick us up. We are a rough diamond and he expects us to become a beautiful precious stone. This is the attitude we should have: waiting for the Lord.

In our society we don’t like waiting. We want things here and now. Drive throughs, 24/7, fast food, shopping online, drones dropping our goodies. We don’t like waiting for the Lord our whole life. We want to be in control, plan our future, foresee coming situations, have everything assured. We would like to know when the Lord is coming. And today in the Gospel Jesus is telling us that he “is coming at an hour we do not expect.” It is easy to be ready for one day or for a week; it is not easy to be ready every day. When we are young and when we are old; when we are healthy and when we are sick; when the sun is shining and when a storm is raging.

Waiting doesn’t mean a passive attitude. On the contrary, our waiting for the Lord demands a very active disposition, standing up, listening, looking towards the horizon. It means to examine our conscience to see if our luggage is ready, to discover what is missing or what we have forgotten. It means to fine tune our engine, to polish the rough edges, to get rid of excess baggage, to check if the lights are working, if we have put the rubbish out, if there is enough food for the journey. It is a daily disposition of being ready for him, to follow him, to be aware of his presence.

When our Lord comes to pick us up, we need to be standing, walking towards him, our eyes fixed on our destination, eternity, to see if we can see his face. We need to be ready to open the door, because the handle is in our side. He can knock on our door at any time and he must not find us sleeping, dozing in a slumber, or away shopping. We cannot just spend our time watching movies, listening to music, playing computer games, surfing the social media, following our sport’s team. We cannot give up, sit on the side of the road and take a siesta.

Two practical things for us to be ready: first to examine our conscience, to know where we have to struggle, what we have to do to improve every day. Love is always asking the person we love what we need to change. We should ask Our Lord what he wants us to do today, to look at God’s agenda. Second thing is to be patient. It takes a long time to grow, to mature, every day a little bit, baby steps, just one thing at the time. We cannot normally tackle big things. God is very patient with us. We don’t know when he is coming, but we still have time. He’ll come when we less expect it, like a thief in the night. But if we are prepared, we’ll see him coming, just as holy people can sense when they are going to die, because they are longing for him.

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