Thursday of the Twenty-ninth Week in Ordinary Time
October 26, 2023

Today’s Readings:

https://bible.usccb.org/bible/readings/102623.cfm

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Today, in God’s Lavish Mercy,  Jesus says he has come to set fire on the earth! He says that, because of him, there will not be peace but division, setting households against one another. It’s not a comforting Gospel.

“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 baptized,
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.

Luke 12: 49- 1

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We don’t live in a comforting world, do we? We see human beings set against each other in war, political corruption, economic despoiling, human trafficking, ecological crime, and other deeply ingrained systemic abuses.

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Pope John Paul II in his encyclical EVANGELIUM VITAE refers to these realities as a “culture of death”.

Some threats come from nature itself, but they are made worse by the culpable indifference and negligence of those who could in some cases remedy them. Others are the result of situations of violence, hatred and conflicting interests, which lead people to attack others through murder, war, slaughter and genocide.

And how can we fail to consider the violence against life done to millions of human beings, especially children, who are forced into poverty, malnutrition and hunger because of an unjust distribution of resources between peoples and between social classes? And what of the violence inherent not only in wars as such but in the scandalous arms trade, which spawns the many armed conflicts which stain our world with blood? What of the spreading of death caused by reckless tampering with the world’s ecological balance, by the criminal spread of drugs, or by the promotion of certain kinds of sexual activity which, besides being morally unacceptable, also involve grave risks to life? It is impossible to catalogue completely the vast array of threats to human life, so many are the forms, whether explicit or hidden, in which they appear today! 

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Paul says that, through our Baptism, we are called and strengthened to bear witness against such a culture:

But now that you have been freed from sin and have become slaves of God,
the benefit that you have leads to sanctification,
and its end is eternal life.
For the wages of sin is death,
but the gift of God is eternal life in Christ Jesus our Lord.

Romans 6:22-23

Every day, each of us has the opportunity to stand up for mercy and justice by the choices we make, the attitudes we affirm, and the values we stand for. But sometimes it’s hard, because doing so can set us against some of the people around and close to us. That’s when the rubber meets the road! Do we belong to Christ, or not?

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Poetry: A Blessing – Bob Holmes

May the quiet fire of God’s love
arise within you.
May its flames of joy and peace
Enlighten your steps in this world,
And may you be like the burning bush,
The presence of God for each other,
That holy healing of light of love,
The breath of God made manifest
In you.

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Music: Gabriel’s Oboe – written by Ennio Morricone, played by Hauser