A reading of the holy gospel according to Saint Luke. Jesus said to his disciples, this is one of the text you don't see on Christmas cards nor do you see it on Easter cards either. I have come, our lord said, I have come to light a fire on earth. How I wish the blaze were ignited. I have a baptism to receive.
What anguish I feel till it is over. Notice that our lord says, what anguish I feel. He had feelings of anguish. Some people are astonished, but then they have them. Do you think listen.
Do you think I have come to establish peace on earth? I assure you the contrary is true. I have come for division. From now on, a household of five will be divided three against two, and two against three. Father will be split against his own son, and his son against his father, and mother against daughter, and daughter against mother, and mother-in-law against her daughter-in-law, and daughter-in-law against her own mother-in-law.
And this is the good news of Jesus Christ. In the name of the father and of the son and of the holy spirit. Amen. Whenever this passion notice, there's no question about this text of being authentic. The translation is simple.
There's no problem with translation. Did Jesus say it? He certainly did. And not only did he give an academic an abstract generalization, but do you see how concretely he speaks? So you can't miss the point.
He's speaking to Jews. He's speaking to a people who value the unity of a family above everything. And notice how our lord mentions mother-in-law and daughter-in-law. Because with marriage, the daughter-in-law became one of a family and became very close to her mother-in-law living in the same household for the most part. And so our lord, he not only lays down a general statement, you know, that I have come to bring division.
He then goes on to hammer it home to your almost safe, for heaven's sake, stop. Stop. We've had enough of it. What's he trying to tell us? You see, this all happened before his passion, his death, his resurrection.
All of this happened before the church even started. When the so called world and I think you know what I mean when I use the word world in this case. I don't mean the world of God's creation. I mean the the world of our creation. The popular world, the world that you see in your daily newspaper, the world that's exposed let us say in the New Yorker, which I couldn't live without.
But that's the world I'm talking about. And when that world takes you to itself, beware, the red lights are flashing. The red lights are flashing because you can't have it both ways. You can't. Our Lord said that you can't serve God and mammon.
These are hard words. There's nothing soft about this. You talk about you this picture of Christ, you know, of everything being sweet and lovely and comfortable, and the the the lamb lying down beside the wolf, you know, and all of that malarkey. That's not the way the Christian life is at all. And I don't care whether you live that in the most cloistered contemplative order which is still in existence or whether you're living it in the hubbub of Wall Street.
That is irrelevant. You can't escape this conflict. You can't. You have to make a choice. Our Lord said, you cannot serve two masters.
Now the problem here is one of those masters is so concrete, is so immediate, so direct, so apprehensible by all my senses. And furthermore, to make the problem more complicated and to make my situation more difficult, in many instances my very duty to Jesus Christ means I have to use the world. I have to be in the world. But Christ said, don't be of it. Don't be of it.
And that's the problem. That's the problem. And there's where we are. You know, the craziest thing that Marx ever said was that religion was the drug, the opium of the people. All you can say is, if ever religion is an opium, that is a sedative.
It ain't religion, not the religion of Jesus Christ, that's for sure. Just try it. See how it puts you to sleep. I mean the real article. I mean the honest to God following of Jesus Christ.
And I repeat, I you can't escape this conflict. You can't leave the world, as we say, in any actual real sense. Saint Francis of Assisi, I just within almost days visited his village and the main shrines of his existence, the twelfth and the thirteenth centuries. He tried, you see, to separate himself entirely from the material things of this world, to own absolutely nothing. But did he escape the struggle?
Not at all. Not in the least. Because he wanted to bring the good news, the word of Jesus Christ, he wanted to bring it to the people. Well, how do you bring it to the people unless you're with the people? And if you're with the people, you're in danger of being engulfed.
You're in danger of being made a great deal of. You are in danger of being flattered. You are in danger of being put up on a pedestal. There are all kinds of dangers. You can't escape them.
The worst possible thing that can happen to us is to have a false conception of Jesus Christ and his and his peace. Because when Christ uses the word peace, don't look don't think of peace, think of eternal salvation. Now that's true of the old testament. I spent a good bit of time running that word shalom down. And and I consulted some Jewish scholars.
And the best translation of shalom is salvation, not peace. Christ did not he told us, I he said, I haven't come to bring you peace. He says, I've come to bring you war. Look at this text today. Could anything be more scary?
It is. It's frightening that when Jesus Christ comes into a home, it's going to be a divided home. Need it be? The opening prayer of this mass was that Christ establishes unity. And today he says, I've come to establish this unity.
How do you put all of this together? Simple. Very simple. If we are united in Jesus Christ, we will be united in one another. If you are not united with Jesus Christ and he comes into the home, there will be disunion on somebody's part.
There will be struggle. There will be controversy. There will be bitterness, and even worse than that. How do I know? Why our lord told me this.
He tells me this. I'm not guessing. Christ is a principle of unity, but he is the principle. This is hard doctrine. He allows no competitors because as soon as a competitor comes into the picture, his unity is gone completely.
C. S. Lewis put it very simply. He said, when when you of course these figures don't mean a thing, but if any of you have ever tried to line up a bicycle wheel I always like to say put up your hands, those who have tried. But if you have tried to do that, it's a very difficult job.
I'll tell you what happened. You see, have a little tiny special wrench and you tighten up each spokes in that bicycle wheel. If you get one or two a little too tight the wheel will wobble. They have to be all lined up. If you want that wheel to go around perfectly straight, they have to be lined up perfectly.
With what? With what? The rim? That's where your little wrench is. Oh, I know as Lewis says, if the spokes of the bicycle wheel are lined up with a hub, then they will be lined up with one another.
And you can't say it more simply. If you are lined up with Jesus Christ, you will have his peace translated his salvation. And his salvation is action. Action. It's not passive.
It's a warfare. His peace is a warfare. His peace is being a soldier, a militia Christi. After all, Erasmus and Chiridia militia militia militia militia was the name that Erasmus gave to his handbook, the handbook of the militant soldier. The handbook of the man or woman carrying weapons.
That's the translation of infiridium militus. There's where we are. That's what we there's where we and you see how simple it all we have a right to expect controversy. We have a right to expect anguish. We have a right to expect disappointment and bitterness and the failure of friends and the treason of friends.
Judas, One out of 12. That's a pretty high percentage. That's what it means to be a follower of Jesus Christ. How do I know Jesus tells me that? And I cannot compromise.
Oh, I try. I do my best to compromise, but I can never win. Christ is triumphant. He did rise from the tomb. In the name of the father, and the son, and holy spirit.
Amen.