 |
| via Biblia |
Luke 12:49–53
49 “I came to cast fire upon the earth; and would that it were already kindled! 50 I have a baptism to be baptized with; and how I am constrained until it is accomplished! 51 Do you think that I have come to give peace on earth? No, I tell you, but rather division; 52 for henceforth in one house there will be five divided, three against two and two against three; 53 they will be divided, father against son and son against father, mother against daughter and daughter against her mother, mother-in-law against her daughter-in-law and daughter-in-law against her mother-in-law.”
Catholic Exegesis:
The Second Vatican Council teaches that if we are to derive the true meaning from the sacred texts, attention must be devoted “not only to their content but to the unity of the whole of Scripture, the living tradition of the entire Church, and the analogy of faith. […] Everything to do with the interpretation of Scripture is ultimately subject to the judgment of the Church, which exercises the divinely conferred communion and ministry of watching over and interpreting the Word of God” (Dei Verbum, 12).
St. John Paul II, when he promulgated the Catechism of the Catholic Church, explained that the Catechism "is a statement of the Church's faith and of catholic doctrine, attested to or illumined by Sacred Scripture, the Apostolic Tradition and the Church's Magisterium." He went on to "declare it to be a sure norm for teaching the faith and thus a valid and legitimate instrument for ecclesial communion" (Fidei Depositum).
Cited in the Catechism:
Passages from this Gospel reading are cited in the Catechism, paragraphs 536, 607, 696, 1225 and 2804.
Commentary:
12:49–50. In the Bible, fire is often used to describe God’s burning love for men (cf. Deut 4:24; Ex 13:21–22; etc.). This love finds its highest expression in the Son of God become man: “God so loved the world that he gave his only Son” (Jn 3:16). Jesus voluntarily gave up his life out of love for us, and “greater love has no man than this, that a man lay down his life for his friends” (Jn 15:13).
In these words reported by St Luke, Jesus Christ reveals his abounding desire to give his life for love of us. He calls his death a baptism, because from it he will arise victorious never to die again. Our Baptism is a submersion in Christ’s death, in which we die to sin and are reborn to the new life of grace: “we were buried therefore with him by baptism into death, so that as Christ was raised from the dead by the glory of the Father, we too might walk in newness of life” (Rom 6:4).
Through this new life, we Christians should become set on fire in the same way as Jesus set his disciples on fire: “With the amazing naturalness of the things of God, the contemplative soul is filled with apostolic zeal. ‘My heart became hot within me, a fire blazed forth from my thoughts’ (Ps 39:3). What could this fire be if not the fire that Christ talks about: ‘I came to cast fire upon the earth, and would that it were already kindled?’ (Lk 12:49). An apostolic fire that acquires its strength in prayer: there is no better way than this to carry on, throughout the whole world, the battle of peace to which every Christian is called to fill up what is lacking in the sufferings of Christ (cf. Col 1:24)” (St Josemaría Escrivá, Christ Is Passing By, 120).
Jesus brings division, not peace
12:51–53. God has come into the world with a message of peace (cf. Lk 2:14) and reconciliation (cf. Rom 5:11). By resisting, through sin, the redeeming work of Christ, we become his opponents. Injustice and error lead to division and war. “Insofar as men are sinners, the threat of war hangs over them and will so continue until the coming of Christ; but insofar as they can vanquish sin by coming together in charity, violence itself will be vanquished” (Vatican II, Gaudium et spes, 78).
During his own life on earth, Christ was a sign of contradiction (cf. Lk 2:34). Our Lord is forewarning his disciples about the contention and division which will accompany the spread of the Gospel (cf. Lk 6:20–23; Mt 10:24).
Source: The Navarre Bible: Text and Commentaries. Biblical text from the Revised Standard Version and New Vulgate. Commentaries by members of the Faculty of Theology, University of Navarre, Spain.
Published by Four Courts Press, Kill Lane, Blackrock, Co. Dublin, Ireland, and by Scepter Publishers in the United States. We encourage readers to purchase The Navarre Bible for personal study. See Scepter Publishers for details.
"Ignorance of Scripture is ignorance of Christ." St Jerome
No comments:
Post a Comment