Brothers and sisters,
Today’s Gospel is one of those passages that makes us sit up straight. Jesus says: “I have come to bring fire to the earth, and how I wish it were blazing already! … Do you suppose that I am here to bring peace on earth? No, I tell you, but rather division.”
It sounds almost shocking to our ears. We so often call Christ the Prince of Peace, and rightly so. Yet here He speaks of fire, of division even within families, of a struggle that cuts across our deepest bonds.
To make sense of this, we need to hold together today’s three readings.
First, we hear of the prophet Jeremiah, lowered into the muddy cistern because his message was not what the people wanted to hear. He told the truth of God, and for it he was rejected, silenced, and left to die. Jeremiah’s faithfulness brought him suffering, not comfort.
This is the context in which Jesus speaks of “division”. The Word of God is always a double-edged sword. It cuts through pretence, through false peace, through the complacency of “everything’s fine as it is”. Jeremiah lived that reality in his own body. He was literally sunk into the mud for daring to speak God’s truth.
The second reading from Hebrews takes up the same theme: “With so many witnesses in a great cloud all around us, we too should throw off everything that hinders us… Let us not lose sight of Jesus, who leads us in our faith and brings it to perfection.”
The Christian life is not a spectator sport. It is a contest, a race, even a battle. The writer reminds us: “In the struggle against sin, you have not yet resisted to the point of shedding your blood.”
Here again, the call is to endurance, to courage, to perseverance in the face of hostility.
And then the Gospel. Christ’s “fire” is not destruction for its own sake. The Cistercian fathers often speak of fire as the very flame of divine love. St Bernard of Clairvaux, in his sermons on the Song of Songs, says that the soul touched by God’s love burns with a “wound of love” — painful yet life-giving. Love consumes and transforms. Fire destroys what is dead and impure; it refines what is true and precious.
So when Jesus says He has come to bring fire, He is speaking of the fire of God’s love — fierce, uncompromising, purifying. But such a fire does not leave things as they are. It sets apart. It burns away falsehood. It compels a choice. That is why division follows: not because Christ delights in strife, but because the truth always divides — between acceptance and rejection, between fidelity and compromise.
The Cistercians knew this well. To live the monastic life was, in the words of Guerric of Igny, to “take sides with Christ against oneself”. The monk leaves behind family, property, and ordinary securities to embrace a life that seems like folly to the world. This is a kind of division — a holy division — between the old life and the new.
Yet this radical choice is not limited to monks. Every Christian is called, in their own state of life, to choose Christ above all else, even when it costs us relationships, comfort, or approval.
Aelred of Rievaulx once said that true friendship is always in Christ. If someone will not walk the road of Christ with us, then there will be a painful separation. But if we remain faithful, the flame of divine love will be kindled ever more deeply in our hearts.
So how do we live this today?
Like Jeremiah, we must not be afraid to speak truth even when unpopular. Our society often prefers a false peace — “don’t rock the boat” — but the Gospel will sometimes demand that we do rock it, gently but firmly.
Like the Hebrews’ “cloud of witnesses”, we must keep our eyes fixed on Christ, running the race with endurance, throwing aside the weight of sin and distraction.
Like the Cistercian fathers, we must allow God’s fire to burn within us, purifying our intentions, stripping us of self-interest, and setting us ablaze with His love.
This will cause division at times, even within families, as Christ warned. But He never leaves us alone in the struggle. He Himself endured the Cross — and now He walks beside us in every trial.
Brothers and sisters, the peace of Christ is not the peace of compromise or of keeping quiet. It is the peace that comes when love has burned away everything false. It is costly, it is demanding, and sometimes it divides — but it is the only peace that lasts.
Let us pray for the courage of Jeremiah, the endurance of the saints, and the burning love spoken of by St Bernard, that Christ’s fire may blaze in us, and through us set the world alight.
Amen.