DAILY GOSPEL

«Lord, to whom shall we go? You have the words of eternal life.» John 6,68

Thursday, 25 October 2007

Thursday of the Twenty-ninth week in Ordinary Time

Today the Church celebrates : St. Gaudentius

See commentary below or click here
Saint Ambrose : "I have come to set the earth on fire"

Letter to the Romans 6,19-23.

I am speaking in human terms because of the weakness of your nature. For just as you presented the parts of your bodies as slaves to impurity and to lawlessness for lawless ness, so now present them as slaves to righteousness for sanctification. For when you were slaves of sin, you were free from righteousness. But what profit did you get then from the things of which you are now ashamed? For the end of those things is death. But now that you have been freed from sin and have become slaves of God, the benefit that you have leads to sanctification, and its end is eternal life. For the wages of sin is death, but the gift of God is eternal life in Christ Jesus our Lord.

Holy Gospel of Jesus Christ according to Saint Luke 12,49-53.

I have come to set the earth on fire, and how I wish it were already blazing! There is a baptism with which I must be baptized, and how great is my anguish until it is accomplished! Do you think that I have come to establish peace on the earth? No, I tell you, but rather division. From now on a household of five will be divided, three against two and two against three; a father will be divided against his son and a son against his father, a mother against her daughter and a daughter against her mother, a mother-in-law against her daughter-in-law and a daughter-in-law against her mother-in-law."

Copyright © Confraternity of Christian Doctrine, USCCB

Commentary of the day :

Saint Ambrose (c.340-397), Bishop of Milan and Doctor of the Church
Treatise on St Luke's Gospel, 7, 131-132 (SC 52)

"I have come to set the earth on fire"

"I have come to set the earth on fire, and how I wish it were already blazing." The Lord desires to have us vigilant, always waiting for the Saviour's coming… But as the gain is meagre and the merit weak when fear of pain is what prevents us from straying, and since love is what has the greater worth, the Lord himself…sets on fire our longing to win God when he says: "I have come to set the earth on fire." Not the kind of fire that destroys, of course, but that which produces an upright will and perfects the golden vessels in the Lord's house by consuming the chaff and the straw (1Cor 3,12f.), by devouring all this world's veneer acquired through the taste for earthly pleasures and the perishable works of the flesh.

This was the heavenly fire that burned in the bones of the prophets, as Jeremiah declared: "It becomes like fire burning…in my bones," (Jer 20,9). For there is a fire of the Lord of which it is said: "Fire goes before him," (Ps 96,3). The Lord himself is a fire, it says: "which burns without being consumed," (Ex 3,2). The fire of the Lord is light eternal; the lamps of believers are lit at this fire: "Gird your loins and light your lamps," (Lk 12,35). It is because the days of our life are still night that a lamp is necessary. This is the fire which, according to the testimony of the disciples at Emmaus, the Lord himself set within them: "Were not our hearts burning within us while he spoke to us on the way and opened the scriptures to us?" (Lk 24,32). He gives us evident proof of this fire's action, enlightening man's inmost heart. That is why the Lord will come in fire (Is 66,15) so as to devour our faults at the resurrection, fulfil each one's desires with his presence and cast his light over merits and mysteries.

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