This is a reflection on the Mass readings of the day.
Why did Jesus, per today’s Gospel passage, come to create division and set family members against each other? This doesn’t sound very Christian. At least, not in the Ned Flanders brand of Christianity, the ding-dong-diddly let’s-all-be-friendly kind of way.
If we wish to follow Christ, we have to stomach today’s gospel.
Christianity creates division not just because its moral code is tough to follow, or because of belief in difficult things like the Trinity and the Eucharist. Christianity causes division, often bitter division, because it invites us to a radical transformation of our nature through intimate participation in the divinity. This transformation is difficult and painful, and, Christianity tells us, necessary for our happiness. Many consciously decline to pursue the path of Christianity because it involves radical and difficult transformation, and the awareness–perhaps subconscious–that happiness is not possible without that transformation causes bitterness.
So, it is an empirically observable phenomenon that many who choose not to follow the path of Christ are bitter toward those who do.
It is in this sense that Christ has come to cause division–only in the sense that the exaltation and glory, and associated transformation, that He offers us in association with salvation is so very radical.
But it is in this same glorious transformation that St. Paul exalts in the first reading: “That you, rooted and grounded in love, may have strength to comprehend with all the holy ones
what is the breadth and length and height and depth, and to know the love of Christ that surpasses knowledge, so that you may be filled with all the fullness of God.”
Ideas for conversation with the Lord: Meditate on the crucifix, the price your salvation cost Jesus, and consider the how great the glories described in the first reading must be in light of that cost. In full knowledge that the transformation Jesus wishes to perform within you is radical, and that it involves sharing His cross and suffering, tell Him that you choose Him unconditionally, forever, and ask Him for the grace and strength to stay faithful to Him.
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