Titus Brandsma — yes, the Titus of the Titus Room! — the brave Carmelite who stood up against the Nazi ideology of hate and gave his life for it said: “He who wants to win the world for Christ must have the courage to come in conflict with it.” Jesus isn’t threatening difference in today’s Gospel. He is saying that we who honestly and deeply want to live this life of faith will have to suffer, that to live a life without conflict is really not to have lived.
Jeremiah in our First Reading today was coming into conflict with the world in a very literal way. Ancient cisterns are hauntingly beautiful places (just Google it, I did!). Thinking of a starving Jeremiah in an ancient one reminded me of how cruel we are to one another. I am the first to call violence with firearms in this country barbaric and I’m often very critical of our modern government for doing nothing about it. But, the sad fact is we, as a people, have been horribly violent to one another since we could pick up rocks and throw them at each other. Christ knows this and he is frustrated with the limitations that come with humanity. “How I wish it were already blazing!” Jesus shouts! His frustration and excitement for change are palpable.
The Church’s teachings are implicitly in conflict with the world. To love the poor is to ask why they are poor; to give mercy is to offer it to the very people who deserve it least! This will cause conflict!
“The unexamined life is not worth living,” Socrates famously said. Malcolm X would say centuries later, “The examined life is painful.” Whatever you think of Malcolm X, the point is spot on. To examine our lives in a deep way, in a faithful way, is painful and it brings up the very conflicts Jesus is talking about, but we are not without hope. For on that day, when all seems lost, the light will shine in the darkness and we will be drawn from the cistern into the glorious light, and we shall not die.
I’ll be seeing you,
Elliot