First Reading --  They took Jeremiah and threw him into the cistern (Jeremiah 38:4-6, 8-10).

Psalm -- : Lord, come to my aid! (Psalm 40:2-4, 18)

Second Reading --  Let us keep our eyes fixed on Jesus, the leader and perfecter of faith. (Hebrews 12:1-4).

Gospel -- I have come to set the earth on fire, and how I wish it were already blazing. (Luke 12:49-53).

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Reflection by Opening the Word

First Reading
Jeremiah is a prophet and a prophetic figure of Christ. In this passage, we see him delivered from a sort of tomb, as Christ was from the sepulcher. Jeremiah was particularly zealous for God and indicted several of the last kings of Judah for their political and diplomatic maneuvers aimed at avoiding the inevitable conquest by the Babylonian empire, which Jeremiah knew to be the appointed chastisement of God. Of course it is no surprise that this would be thought to be treasonous by those in power, and Jeremiah paid a heavy price for his fidelity to God. Jeremiah also gives us a clear picture of the internal struggles of soul that all those who fight against the enemies of God must face. We have even come to call “Jeremiads” the sorts of complaints to God that we find in the book called Lamentations, which chronicles the struggles of the prophet and the Jewish nation he loved, and to whose best and truest aspirations he gave voice.

Second Reading
Hebrews is a long exhortation addressed to Hebrew Christians who have been tempted to return to the practices of Judaism. The author makes elaborate arguments from the Old Testament to show that the law, Temple, and Levitical priesthood have all found their fulfillment and perfect expression in Christ. We can only imagine how hard a sell this must have been, given the history and grandeur of Jewish ritual practice and all it had meant to the Jewish people. Scholars believe that those to whom the work is addressed may have been priests who had been forced to flee Jerusalem because of their Christian commitment and who now long for the ritual in which they had played a part.

The Christian worship in the early Church might have seemed rather plain in comparison, not yet having acquired the majesty it would later express. Unlike the grandeur of the visible Temple, which could be seen with the eye, the grandeur of the new life in Christ required faith to see, and it would invite persecution, not Levitical honors. And so we have this appeal to the heroism of a faith that yields “evidence of things not seen,” as we saw in last Sunday’s passage and now in this one for the Twentieth Sunday. This appeal conjures in the minds of these Jews a great “cloud of witnesses” from Jewish history, most of whom had lived long ago and had never seen the Temple. We, too, he argues, long for the Temple that Christ has now entered, but which we have not yet seen. If we keep our eyes on him, the pioneer who has gone before us, we can have faith that we will see that most beautiful of Temples on high.

Gospel
For many of us the missing critical dimension of our faith is that sort of zeal that our Lord showed on our behalf. The greatest obstacle we face in this regard is that ours is a culture that stresses personal comfort and fulfillment above all. As C.S. Lewis put it, “For wise men of old, the cardinal problem of human life was how to conform the soul to objective reality, and the solution was wisdom, self-discipline, and virtue. For the modern, the cardinal problem is how to conform reality to the wishes of man.” That quality of culture teaches us to be dissatisfied with discomfort, with struggle, with sacrifice, and it saps our spiritual energies.

Jesus in this Gospel passage is shown hungering for the sacrifice that will win the salvation of the human race, even despising the shame of the cross, as our second reading from Hebrews says. He is a warrior for the good of souls. That is a particularly apt image with reference to this passage from Luke where he asks, “Do you think that I have come to establish peace on the earth? No, I tell you, but rather division.” He, of course, doesn’t will the opposition he will face from evil men and spirits, nor is he shy in facing it, even unto death, for those who need his help. St. Thomas Aquinas notes that zeal is proportionate to the intensity of love, and the love of true friendship creates a zeal that energetically repels anything that might harm one’s friend. From Jesus, who has made us his friends and loved and defended us from death, we can learn to love him zealously in return.

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Imagine you lived in Jesus’ time. You have been following him, listening to him teach, watching him minister, seeing him work miracles. Now he’s headed toward Jerusalem where he says he will suffer and be crucified. You hear him say that if you want to follow him, the way will be rough, your companions may be few, and many in the world may not want to hear your message. Even family members, friends, or co-workers may look down on you or simply not understand. Will you still follow? Will you trust him when he says it will be okay despite the hardships—that the reward will far outweigh the cost?  How do you respond?

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Reprinted from  Opening the Word at Formed.org .
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