Fire
The fire Jesus refers to is the unsettling power of the knowledge of His procedures and of the love He has come to bring. It is clear that out of His love and passion for us, He would want that flame to be already blazing setting the world on fire. The baptism, rather the immersion, that anguishes Him, is the immersion in the cross' arms, His immersion into His death on the cross. That immersion becomes increasingly anguishing, terrible, painful and dreadful as it is linked to the hate and the violent rejection by His beloved sons and daughters. The peace He has come to establish has nothing to do with the peace between human beings and or the ties linking family and blood relations. Rather, Jesus forewarns us that the evangelical procedures He has come to disclose to us for the true wellbeing of all will find their fiercest enemies and opponents amidst our dearest friend and family relationships. It is almost incredible, but sadly true, that the most ferocious fights develop under one's own roof, between hearts and minds with different tendencies and religious and faith conceptions. It is exactly in the name of the Gospel and its proposal that the saddest rituals of distrust, scorn and disapproval unravel. Jesus has come to tear apart the peace in family and blood relations, as it is a fake peace, built on convenience and empty conventions, tradition, educational slavery, lifestyles without soul and spirituality, economic interests, emotional blackmail. Jesus has come to bring a fire, a fire that will bring division and separation wherever blood relations and familiar ties cover opportunism and fears, interests and moralism, without having generated true love relationships, true relationships in spirit and soul.
In truth, Jesus, with the fire of His evangelical proposal, will tear apart and divide those who have never been united, but have only thought they were, and He will do so starting from the family cell reaching out to each corner of the earth. Jesus' fire does not want to destroy, but rather to purify, to purify from within, and God only knows how much that it is needed.