Opposition Is Part of Following Jesus

If you pay close attention to this Gospel reading, you can hear the sadness in Jesus’ voice. He tells us he wants to set the world on fire, but that’s not the reason for HIs sadness. The reason for His sadness is because He knows what’s going to come of it. And that is opposition, division. 
When He’s talking about the fire that He’s going to bring, what’s He talking about? Teenagers here should know this, because He’s talking about the Holy Spirit: Confirmation. 
Remember what happened at Pentecost, when the flames of fire came down upon the Apostles? That’s the fire that He’s sending—sending the Holy Spirit into the hearts of all. And sadly, it’s going to cause division because the Holy Spirit calls us to a life of virtue, of humility, patience, obedience, and love of neighbor. And far too many times, people resist that in their lives. 

They want to do things their own way. 

This is what’s happening in our first reading. What’s Jeremiah doing? He’s going around preaching the word of God, telling people what it is that God wants from them. And we heard what happened to poor Jeremiah. They threw him in a cistern, sank him into the mud. The letter to the Hebrews tells us that Jesus knew there was going to be opposition to Him. The letter to the Hebrews also cautions us that opposition is going to come to us also, because if we live lives of virtue, humility, patience, obedience, and love of neighbor, there’s going to be opposition. There’s going to be people who say, “we don't want to hear about this,” just like they did to Jeremiah. And the letter to the Hebrews [says], that… that could even lead to the shedding of our blood. And it does in multiple places around the world. What causes this division is the evil one. Everything that happens in this world that causes us to be divided has one root cause: the evil one whispering in someone’s ear, “You don’t need to listen to God. You don’t need to listen to the Holy Spirit.” This is why the priesthood is so important in the Catholic Church. 

We have the priesthood for two reasons. One is to demonstrate what a life of virtue, humility, patience, obedience, and love of neighbor looks like. Last night, we celebrated Monsignor Melanowski’s 90th birthday. And 62 years of that was as a priest. 62 years of that was a man striving to live the life of virtue, to live a life of humility. Father Raj has been a priest for over 30 years. Same thing… [he is] demonstrating to all of us what that looks like, that we too can live lives of virtue, humility, patience, obedience, and love of neighbor. 

But there’s a second reason that we have the priesthood: the Sacraments. What’s baptism do for us? Baptism makes us into members of the Body of Christ. It brings unity. It brings us together. Without priests, we don’t have the Eucharist. And if we receive the Eucharist worthily, it actually makes us into the Body of Christ. It makes us one with Christ! (UNITY!) And then we have the Sacrament of Confirmation, where we receive the fullness of the Holy Spirit. And what it is intended to do is to turn us out into the world and share the word of God. Much like Jeremiah. And in the world we live in, we’re going to get the exact same reception (except for the cistern part; we don’t have those anymore). But this is why we need priests. 

But it’s not just priests; all of us, through our Baptism, through our Confirmation, through the Eucharist, are called to live lives of virtue, humility, patience, obedience (that’s a tough one), and loving our neighbors more than ourselves (or at least as much as ourselves). 

This is what Jesus was talking about in the Gospel. He would like to see that Holy Spirit settle in all of us! And if it settles in all of us, we will set the world on fire, opposition or not. We are the one, holy, catholic, and apostolic Church. ONE, united in faith. And Jesus, I trust in you.

Amen.