Sacred Heart of Jesus Parish

FR MICHAEL’S THOUGHT ON BIBLICAL IMAGERY

(Fr. Michael Boakye Yeboah, Vice Rector: St Gregory Seminary, Kumasi-Ghana)

FIRE

The 20^th Sunday in Ordinary Time’s Gospel is among the hard sayings of Jesus. In the Gospel Jesus uses fire to bring home his lesson to his listeners. Let us take a close look at the term “Fire” and try to understand its biblical significance to the Christian.

Fire is a chemical reaction that gives off light and heat. It is an example of the chemical process of oxidation. Fire is useful, but also very dangerous because it can cause houses, trees and many other things to burn into ashes.

In the Christian literature, the most publicized aspect of fire is Hell, where Christian doctrine holds that an eternal fire will burn sinners. The author to the book of Revelations puts it in this way: “Those not found written in the book of life would be thrown into the lake of fire” (Rev 20:15). Once the name hell comes to mind the next thing that is associated with it, is fire. Such a graphic presentation of Hell can be visualized in the Inferno, the classical work of the medieval maestro Dante Alighieri. Dante Alighieri’s Inferno, the poet and pilgrim Dante embarks on a spiritual journey. Guided by the soul of the Roman poet Virgil, Dante travels down through the nine circles of Hell and witnesses the punishments eternally suffered by the souls of deceased sinners. The unredeemable nature of Dante’s hell is capture in this famous: “Abandon all hope, you who enter here.”

The fire of hell is so terrifying that many Christians live their lives well in order to avoid it. So, when the inspired writer tells us of Jesus’ use of fire in such a terrifying way, it really sends fear to the spine of the average Christian. The question one may ask is that: Did Jesus use fire in its figurative sense or its literal sense? Jesus’ use of fire should not be understood in its destructive and harmful sense but its redemptive sense. Within the context of salvation, here fire can be understood in its restorative sense.

The fire that Jesus has come to cast upon the earth is the fire of divine love that will ignite men. It will begin to burn from the Cross, which is the baptism he fears. But by no means will all men permit themselves to be set ablaze by the unconditionality of this fire. Because some will resist the very love that could and would lead men to unity, humanity will be divided. More clearly and inexorably than before Christ, humanity will divide itself into two kingdoms or states. St Augustine called them the “city of God”, where love rules, and the “city of this world”, where cupidity rules. Jesus reveals that the division severs even the closest family ties, while Saint Paul depicts this division as splitting apart even the individual human heart, where the flesh fights against the spirit (Gal. 5:17) and the “wretched man” “does not do what he wants but does what he (fundamentally) loathes” (Rom. 7:15). Yet neither for Jesus nor for Paul is this a fatalistic tragedy. Instead, it is a fight that will be fought all the way to victory. Love and hate are not two co-eternal principles, as the Manichaeans thought, rather, we can “conquer evil through good” (Rom 12:21). It is to that end that God has granted us the power of his grace.

In the Bible, the idea of fire is expressed giving us a graphic illustration of God’s purifying process. God refines us so that his image is reflected in us. The intense heat of the refining process brings the impurities of the metal to the surface. These initial impurities are scraped off the surface. Then the process continues until the metal is pure enough to reflect an image on the surface like a mirror or still water. Likewise, the spiritual fire of the Holy Spirit comes to purify the impurities of our selves so that our authentic image that bears the likeness of God will emerge. The purifying act of God can come in the form of God’s testing. When you experience God’s testing in your life, allow it to melt your heart and submit to God with a full trust that He is purifying your heart. As each test brings impurities to the surface, allow the Lord to scrape them out of you so He can heal and restore your heart.

Be willing to surrender your heart to the Lord as you come before Him in prayer, this will lead to a greater confidence in Him to answer your prayers, as you draw closer to Him through the purifying of your heart. Some of the tests that the Christian may go through, can be likened to what Jeremiah experienced in the first reading (Jeremiah 38:4-6, 8-10). The struggle is harsh because the “kingdom of this world” is filled with cruelty. From time immemorial war, torture, and all manner of injustice have ruled this world, and, after the appearance of Christ, the “Prince of Peace”, it seemed as if they only increased. Christ divides and thereby sharpens the contrast. What happens to Jeremiah in the first reading is a single parable for the countless abominations that take place in the world, at times in the name of religion. The prophet is exposed to this torture, which was intended to kill him, for the sake of the word of God, which was spoken against Israel’s blind insistence on making war. In the Psalms the devout pray repeatedly that God would rescue them from the mud in which they are sinking (10:9; 13:12, etc). Job has been relegated to the last and lowest place and has been treated as “the scum of all” (1 Cor 4:9, 13).

In the “contest” referred to in the second reading, a contest in which the Christian might be inclined to give up, there is only one thing to do: look steadily at the “One who inspires and perfects faith”, the One who “has endured the opposition of sinners”, to himself. Long before us, countless others (a “great cloud of witnesses”) have done this and have been tested even more severely than we – even to the “point of death”. Jesus took upon himself plenty of shame in the sight of the world – his entire path to the cross was accompanied by nothing but scorn and mockery. He has made his way through this mud to “the right of God’s throne.” Anyone who looks at this example would be ashamed to lag so far behind him in absorbing.

 As we have seen, fire carries a destructive sense and a redemptive sense. There is no way one can avoid being in one category or another. The Christian who give his/her life to Jesus will continuously live in the purifying-redemptive category of fire while the person who does not give his/her life to Jesus, will suffer eternal destruction in hell fire at the end of his/her life. The choice is yours.