A Baptism of Fire

Homily for Thursday of the Twenty-Ninth Week in Ordinary Time

In today’s Gospel text, Jesus speaks of a baptism with which he must be baptized. He does not speak of baptism in the context of water but in the context of suffering and death. He will shed his blood to save the world, and he says that this experience causes him anguish until it is accomplished, until it is over. He knows that it is through his death that God’s people will be reconciled to the Father. However, because he is both fully divine and fully human, he wishes that the pain and agony of his passion would be over and done with.

There is another cause for his anguish. He also realizes that his sacrifice and the reconciliation which it will bring about will bring dissension and opposition with it. This is the cost of our discipleship. This is what is at stake when we give everything to follow Jesus. The eternal peace he offers is real and true, but the journey to that end may lead to conflicts here on earth.

Just as the life of Jesus involved sacrifice and suffering, the Christian life will experience the same sacrifice and suffering. Through our own sacrifice and suffering we will get just a glimpse how profound his suffering was. He suffered and died on the cross so that we might be reconciled to him.

While the Gospel of Saint Luke tends to portray Jesus as one is for the poor and for the sinner, St. Luke does not avoid this challenging picture of what we can expect if we follow Jesus. Through Saint Luke, we hear Jesus speaking honestly of the challenges we will endure in this life and the promised rewards that come in the next. Those rewards will be far greater than we could ever imagine.