20 October 2022
Thursday of the Twenty-Ninth Week in Ordinary Time
A fire is something which must be tended to carefully, especially in its infancy. It must begin with small pieces of kindling, such as bark, brush, or twigs; then, it can gradually grow with larger sticks and pieces of wood until the fire can consume whole logs at once. Once it reaches this last stage, nearly anything can be thrown in.
In today’s Gospel (Luke 12:49–53), Jesus says that he has “come to set the earth on fire.” This fire is nothing other than his divine love, a refining, purifying and consuming flame which burns in his Sacred Heart. Our hearts are created to burn with this same flame of divine love, and we must make sure that that flame—implanted in our hearts at Baptism—does not grow dim. We tend this flame above all by going back to its divine Source in insistent prayer, but also by allowing that flame to consume us, first with the “kindling” of small, daily acts of charity, and then with greater acts of love and sacrifice.
In our prayer today, let us contemplate the desire of Jesus to set the world ablaze with his love, and let us examine ourselves to see what acts of charity—especially the small, everyday ones—we are called to hand over to that flame and so be consumed.