20th Sunday in Ordinary Time, Year C
First Reading: Jer 38:1–2ab, 4–6, 8–10
Second Reading: Heb 12:1–4
Gospel Reading: Lk 12:49–53

At Christmas, our favourite refrain is “Peace on earth.” We think of good things to eat, ceasefires in troubled areas, everything going our way.

This Sunday’s Gospel reading shatters that picture. Jesus says, “Do you think that I have come to bring peace to the earth? No, I tell you, but rather division!”

In the first reading, Jeremiah found out the hard way that God’s word did not bring peace. In fact, his neighbours said that he had their ruin in mind, not their welfare.

How often we deny God’s word when it does not bring us peace as we see it! “That can’t be what God means,” we argue; “it’s so uncomfortable, so alien to my way of thinking. God wants me to be happy.” He can’t want me to continue living with my wife when I no longer love her, or to go through nine months of hardship to bring this child to birth when I don’t want it, or to live in poverty when I can take all I want from work, or to lose this court case when I just have to bend the truth a little. God wants my happiness; the Catechism says so.

In St. John’s Gospel, Christ says that peace is his gift to us, but he immediately adds, “I do not give it to you as the world gives peace.” Christ wants our peace, yes; but, knowing better than we do what will bring our everlasting happiness, he warned us that we will have to deny ourselves, pick up a heavy cross every day, and follow him. It might even mean following him into Auschwitz, as it did for St. Maximilian Kolbe, whose feast day is Aug. 14.

Christ said that we would have to prefer him to everything and everyone else: father, mother, wife, children, and lands. This Sunday he warns that preferring him might even set us against father, mother, wife, or children.

For a politician, it might mean loss of popularity or power for trying to make abortion illegal.

For a police officer, it might mean ostracism for refusing to take bribes.

For a newspaper reporter, it might mean loss of a job for reporting the truth instead of what the public wants to hear.

For a single person, it means strange looks and questions when you try to remain chaste.

For a married couple, it means nasty comments when you conceive your fifth child.

The “sin that clings so closely,” as St. Paul says in the second reading, is different for each of us.

This Sunday’s readings might sound depressing. However, in fact, they encourage us by pointing out that our own difficulties are normal and not insuperable.

We must be careful, however, not to fall into the opposite error. Some people seem to reason that if following Christ causes opposition, then opposition means we must be following Christ!

We should regard opposition as St. Thomas More did. In the film A Man for All Seasons, he agreed with the king wherever he could, as when he accepted Anne Boleyn’s children as heirs to the throne. Even when he disagreed, he did it quietly and regretfully, not rejoicing in the strife like his son-in-law Will Roper, but doing his best to keep the peace.

“If God suffers us to fall to such a case that there is no escaping, then we may stand to our tackle as best we can,” he told Roper. However, “it’s God’s part, not our own, to bring ourselves to that extremity. Our natural business lies in escaping.”

We may not have to give our lives for Christ, as St. Thomas More did, but there will be difficulties enough. As St. Paul said, think of what Christ endured for the sake of the “joy that was set before him” and realize that “you have not yet resisted to the point of shedding your blood.”

Father Hawkswell has now finished teaching The Catholic Faith in Plain English for the summer. The whole course will remain available in written form and YouTube form at beholdvancouver.org/catholic-faith-course until it starts again, with new insights, on Sept. 7. The in-person course schedule will be Sundays (2 – 4 p.m. at the John Paul II Pastoral Centre, 4885 Saint John Paul II Way, 33rd Avenue and Willow Street, Vancouver) and Mondays (10 a.m. – noon in St. Anthony’s Church Hall, 2347 Inglewood Avenue, West Vancouver). The title of next week’s talk is Consecrated Life. The course is completely free of charge, and no pre-registration is necessary. The first session will be an introduction.