Thursday, Twenty Ninth Week in Ordinary Time

Jesus often speaks in the language of images, and we find him using one such image at the beginning of today’s gospel reading, ‘I have come to bring fire to the earth, and how I wish it were blazing already’. John the Baptist had said of Jesus that he would baptize people with the Holy Spirit and fire. Jesus brings the fire of the Spirit to the earth, the Spirit of God’s purifying and renewing love. His mission of bringing the fire of God’s Spirit to the earth would put Jesus on a collision course with powerful people who were content with the status quo, and it would eventually put him on a Roman cross. His mission would be divisive, with some opening their hearts to the fire of God’s Spirit and others trying to extinguish it. This division would even run through families, setting children against their parents. According to Paul in the first reading, God’s Spirit gives us the power for our hidden self to grow strong, because through the Spirit Christ can live in our hearts. When the risen Lord lives in our hearts, our hidden self, our deepest self, our true self, grows strong. In the language of that first reading, our lives will then be planted in the Lord’s love and built on his love, and we will have the strength to grasp something of the breadth and length, the height and depth of the Lord’s love. According to the final words of that reading, the power of the Spirit working within us will do infinitely more than we could ask or imagine. Paul gives us here a wonderful vision of life in the Spirit. Here is a fire that we can safely run towards and open our lives to, because it is the fire of a love – God’s love in Christ – that seeks our present and ultimate good.