October 21, 2016: Fire upon the Earth

October 21, 2016: Fire upon the Earth

A REFLECTION ON LUKE 12:49-53

Jesus said to his disciples: “I have come to set the earth on fire, and how I wish it were already blazing!”

We are surrounded by fire–the fragments of the ball of fire that Jesus cast upon the earth and of which he speaks in this Gospel passage.  It was his mission and it consumed him–this passionate desire to ignite all creation with the recognition that the spark at the heart of all that exists is his Presence, the presence of the Trinity.

This spark pulses deep within all that God has made, making everything a Burning Bush, a Theophany, and it is the joy of being a creature because God is closer to us than we are to ourselves.  It is our call as Cistercians to be given a way of life that places us in this process of living in which the duff of every day life, of our past choices and our personal histories is slowly burned away so that more and more, we can become aware of how brightly the world shines with the presence of God.  It is a slow and sometimes arduous process.

Jesus must have experienced that, too, or why else would he have cried out in the passion of his heart, “Would that it were already accomplished”?  Yes, when he cast his fire upon the earth, he knew it was falling on thick layers of the human heart, his beloved creatures.  He knew that it was asking a lot of us.  But the flame was cast, and he knew that some would allow that flame of God to burn slowly through the crust of what life brings.  And that through patience and perseverance, driven on by desire, they would one day “become all flame,” as our desert fathers say.  To become prayer, to become a human being fully alive, to be all that we were made to be.  To live from that Spark within and recognize that spark in all that surrounds them.  To live through love in the presence of God.  An all-consuming love because that is its nature:  it turns all that it touches into itself.

We have been blessed to be called to this path.  Most of the journey is in the dark, or so it seems.  But descending into our depths, don’t you feel its warmth?