REFLECTION

GOSPEL 

On Fire with the Spirit   

Jesus said to his disciples: “I have come to set the earth on fire, and how I wish it were already blazing! There is a baptism with which I must be baptised, and how great is my anguish until it is accomplished!

Do you think that I have come to establish peace on the earth? No, I tell you, but rather division. From now on a household of five will be divided, three against two and two against three; a father will be divided against his son and a son against his father, a mother against her daughter and a daughter against her mother, a mother-in-law against her daughter-in-law and a daughter-in-law against her mother-in-law.”                Luke 12: 49-53

REFLECTION:

Christian Spirituality may be defined as living, with the tensions caused by our responding to the invitations of Jesus in the Gospels and in our lives. Tensions are a part of every relationship and what we hear in today’s Gospel Reading is full of them. The big question is whether there can be peace while experiencing tensions.

Our TV advertisements promote many items to resolve these nasty tensions. Jesus seems to be advertising something quite different.

This is a puzzling bit of Scripture we have to ponder and pray with. The “peace” which Jesus has come not to establish is a soft, “kind-of'' relational tenseless accommodation. Jesus, rather, is inviting His followers into a real relationship in which selfishness, uncaring, violence, and irreverence is confronted. Those following Jesus have all the human characteristics as we do. I was recently speaking to a young mother who was trying to “reason” with her two-year-old son. We all have lots of “terrible-twoness” in us and His invitations are directed right into those self-establishing, self-determining forces.

Our spirituality is centred on our making decisions which allow us to listen to His invitation and as well to the human invitations which cause the Holy Tension we call Faith. As sacred as family was in the times of Jesus, He speaks right to how Faith calls for decisions and decisions can cause tensions. I find the “peace” Jesus came to offer flows from our not allowing our belief in Jesus to separate us from, but unite us to His family members our sisters and brothers. This will sometimes cause tensions, but tensions prove the quality of His relationship with us and us with Him and within ourselves.   

Julie Leonard

Religious Education Leader

Wellbeing Leader