20th Sunday of Ordinary Time, Year C

I have come to cast fire upon the earth. These words of Jesus to his disciples in this Sunday's Gospel are interpreteted by Blessed Denis the Carthusian in this spiritual sense:

Christ with sword
(Visoki Dečanki, Kosovo, 14th c.)

In other words, I have come down from the highest heaven and appeared to men and women through the mystery of the incarnation in order to light the fire of divine love in human hearts. And how I wish it were already ablaze! How I wish it were already kindled, fanned into flame by the Holy Spirit, and leaping forth in good works. 

The way to attain the perfection of divine love is then stated. Do you think that I have come to bring peace on earth? In other words: Do not imagine that I have come to offer people a sensual, worldly, and unruly peace that will enable them to be united in their vices and achieve earthly prosperity. No, I tell you, I have not come to offer that kind of peace, but rather division – a good, healthy kind of division, physical as well as spiritual. Love for God and desire for inner peace will set those who believe in me at odds with wicked men and women, and make them part company with those who would turn them from their course of spiritual progress and from the purity of divine love, or who attempt to hinder them. 

Good, interior, spiritual peace consists in the deposit the mind in God, and in a rightly ordered harmony. To bestow this peace was the chief reason for Christ’s coming. This inner peace flows from love. It is an unassailable joy of the mind in God, and it is called peace of heart. It is the beginning and a kind of foretaste of the peace of the saints in heaven – the peace of eternity.

4th Sunday of Ordinary Time, Year A

Matthew tells us in the gospel this morning that Jesus went up onto a mountain and taught his disciples (Matthew 5:1-12). The Sermon on the Mount, as it's called, records his words: Blessed are the poor in spirit ... Blessed are the meek ... the merciful ... the pure in heart.... In one of this morning's long readings at Vigils, we hear part of a homily by St. Chromatius on this gospel:

Sermon on the Mount, Carl Bloch (detail)

Blessed are the peacemakers; they shall be called the children of God. You can see how great the merit of peacemakers is, when they are no longer called servants but children of God. This reward is fully justified, since the lover of peace loves Christ, the author of peace, to whom Paul the Apostle even gives ‘peace’ as a name: He is our peace, he says. Someone who does not love peace goes in pursuit of discord, for he loves its author, the devil. In the beginning the devil caused discord between God and the human race by leading the first man to violate God’s precept. The reason why the Son of God came down from heaven was to condemn the devil, the author of discord, and to make peace between God and the human race by reconciling its members to God and making God propitious to them.

We must therefore become peacemakers so that we may deserve to be called children of God. Without peace, we lose the name not only of children but even of servants, since the apostle says to us: Love peace, for without it none of us can be pleasing to God.