Sunday 18 August 2019
20th Sunday in Ordinary Time
Morning Masses 8.30 & 10.15am Evening 6pm
St Peter's Catholic Church SS9 4BX
Eastwood Parish Leigh on Sea
Next Ordinariate Use Masses
Low Mass Tuesday 3 September 7.30pm
Sung Sunday Mass 12 noon 8th September
Consuming Fire
Scott Hahn Reflects on the Twentieth Sunday in Ordinary Time
Readings:
Jeremiah 38:4–6, 8–10
Psalm 40:2–4, 18
Hebrews 12:1–4
Luke 12:49–53
Our God is a consuming fire, the Scriptures tell us (see Hebrews 12:29; Deuteronomy 4:24). And in this week’s Gospel, Jesus uses the image of fire to describe the demands of discipleship.
The fire He has come to cast on the earth is the fire that He wants
to blaze in each of our hearts. He made us from the dust of the earth
(see Genesis 2:7) and filled us with the fire of the Holy Spirit in Baptism (see Luke 3:16).
We were baptized into His death (see Romans 6:3).
This is the baptism our Lord speaks of in the Gospel this week. The
baptism with which He must be baptized is His passion and death, by
which He accomplished our redemption and sent forth the fire of the
Spirit on the earth (see Acts 2:3).
The fire has been set, but it is not yet blazing. We are called to
enter deeper into the consuming love of God. We must examine our
consciences and our actions, submitting ourselves to the revealing fire
of God’s Word (see 1 Corinthians 3:13).
In our struggle against sin, we have not yet resisted to the point of
shedding our own blood, Paul tells us in this week’s Epistle. We have
not undergone the suffering that Jeremiah suffers in the First Reading
this week.
But this is what true discipleship requires. To be a disciple is to
be inflamed with the love of the God. It is to have an unquenchable
desire for holiness and zeal for the salvation of our brothers and
sisters.
Being His disciple does not bring peace in the false way that the world proclaims peace (see Jeremiah 8:11). It means division and hardship. It may bring us to conflict with our own flesh and blood.
But Christ is our peace (see Ephesians 2:14). By His Cross He has lifted us up from the mire of sin and death—as He will rescue the prophet Jeremiah (see Jeremiah 38:10).
And as we sing in the Psalm this week, we trust in our deliverer.
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