Eileen writes: A passage from Luke (12:49-53) read at Mass last summer disturbs me. To me the Lord is full of compassion and love, yet Jesus says, “Do you suppose that I am here to bring peace on earth? No, I tell you, but rather division. For from now on, a household of five will be divided: three against two and two against three”. So that Sunday’s Gospel is a contradiction. Please, an explanation. Fr Bernard McGuckian SJ responds.
Jesus wants to give us the gift of peace but not at any price. It has to be based on truth. This should not surprise us coming from the one who described himself as ‘the Way, the Truth and the Life’. After much thought on the subject, Dante Alighieri – one of the greatest of all poets – came to a simple conclusion: ‘in his will is our peace.’ Peace cannot be found anywhere else; passing pleasure, but not lasting peace.
Only a genuine desire that God’s will be done brings peace to a human heart. This is sometimes described as ‘tranquillity of order’. But reaching this happy situation often demands a personal struggle. The effort required to discover God’s will and to do it can sometimes lead to misunderstanding and even hostility. This can happen in a family situation, even a good one.
We can all take comfort from the fact that there was a misunderstanding in the Holy Family itself when Jesus first asserted his vocation to be ‘about his Father’s business’. However, with good will, the time of conflict in the family passes and it becomes evident that everything was happening for the best.
The experience of some of the great saints who had differences with their families is clear evidence that this can happen. After a row with his father, the local bishop had to provide St Francis of Assisi with clothes as he left the family home naked.
In the Gospel passage you mention, Jesus makes assertions about the effects on family life of his coming on earth. He talks about divisions that we find unpalatable. The catalogue is pretty comprehensive: The father divided against the son, son against father, mother against daughter, daughter against mother, mother-in-law against daughter-in-law, daughter-in-law against mother-in-law: hardly a description of domestic bliss. Yet these are the words of the same Jesus who said, ‘Peace I bequeath to you, my own peace I give you, a peace that the world cannot give, this is my gift to you’ (Jn.14:27).
When Jesus spoke his mind it was often difficult for his disciples to know precisely what he meant. For instance, a very short time after he had addressed Simon as the Rock on which he would build his Church, the other disciples heard the same Simon called Satan and ordered to get behind Jesus. It would be hard to think of a bigger contradiction.
Perhaps this incident influenced the words written by Simon Peter in his epistle years later: ‘We must recognize that the interpretation of scriptural prophecy is never a matter for the individual. For no prophecy ever came from human initiative. When people spoke for God it was the Holy Spirit that moved them’ (2 Peter 1, 20-21).
We need guidance when reading the Bible, regardless of who, or how clever we are. The conversation between Philip and the Ethiopian on his way home by chariot from Jerusalem is a striking example of this. Philip questions him as he reads about a suffering servant in the Book of Isaiah: ‘Do you understand what you are reading?’ ‘How could I, unless I have someone to guide me?’ He was trying to figure out if the prophet Isaiah was referring to himself or someone else. Without Philip’s help he would not have known that the passage was a prophecy about the passion of Jesus, the true Lamb of God (cf Acts 8:26-35).
While we call the Bible a book, it is, rather, a small library containing seventy-two books. Written under
the inspiration of the Holy Spirit, by a number of authors over 1000 years, these books contain a variety of literary styles. It is important to know whether a particular passage is a poem, an historical account, or a parable. Indeed it is well-nigh impossible to make sense of some of the mysterious words of Jesus unless we see them in the context of the other things he said and did and indeed, of things that were written about him centuries before he was born.
Wouldn’t the scripture scholars and indeed, all of us, love to have more details about the conversation after the Resurrection when Jesus spoke to the two disciples on the way to Emmaus: ‘Then, starting with Moses and going through all the prophets, he explained to them the passages throughout the scriptures that were about himself’ (Lk.24:27)?
After listening to the Gospel, you noted a contradiction. Someone else had a similar reaction a long time ago but it did not disturb his peace as he prepared to take his leave of life. When Jesus as an infant was first brought to the temple in Jerusalem by his parents, the prophet Simeon said of him, ‘Behold this child who is destined for the fall and rise of many in Israel, destined to be a sign of contradiction.’ (Lk.2:34) ?
This article first appeared in The Messenger (January 2008), a publication of the Irish Jesuits.
