āI have come to set the earth on fireā (Lk 12:49)
The talk below is an extract from the St Jude Novena which I preached in San Francisco in November 2019. I offer it on 29 April 2020, the feast of St Catherine of Siena whose words form the basis for this reflection. The audio recording of the talk below is online here.Ā
A few years ago in London, Prince William married Catherine Middleton in an Anglican church service that was broadcast around the world. The then Anglican Bishop of London, Richard Chartres, acknowledged that the day, 29th of April, was the feast of the Dominican Saint Catherine of Siena, and he began his sermon with her words: āBe who God meant you to be and you will set the world on fire.ā Unfortunately, having begun so well, he then interpreted this beautiful phrase in a rather insipid manner. He said, weāre called to help each other (especially through marriage) to become our ādeepest and truest selves.ā In other words, God desires us to actualise ourselves, express our inner selves, and be true to ourselves ā whatever that means! But St Catherine, that great mystic who had dialogues with God the Father, could not have meant something so banal, could she?
So, let me suggest a more Catholic reading of St Catherineās words, and therefore a much more awe-inspiring understanding of the truth. Who does God mean you to be? He desires you for himself! He wants you to be his Beloved, his Spouse, his intimate Friend! God desires to be bound to you in a love that is closer than the love of husband and wife! St Catherine of Siena thus cries out: āO eternal Father! O fiery abyss of charity! O eternal beauty! O eternal wisdom! O eternal goodness! O eternal mercy! O hope and refuge of sinners!⦠O mad Lover! Are you indeed in need of your creature? It seems to me you are for your behave as though you could not live without her⦠Why then are you so mad? Because you have fallen in love with what you have made! You are pleased and delighted over her within yourself, as if you were drunk for her salvation. She runs away from you and you go looking for her. She strays and you draw closer to her. You clothed yourself in our humanity and nearer than that you could not have come.ā
Hence, in the Song of Songs, long understood to be the wedding song of God and the human soul; the love song of Christ and his Bride the Church, God the Lover plays hide-and-seek with the Beloved soul, and then, he sings to her, that is to say, to you and to me: āArise, my love, my fair one, and come away⦠My beloved is mine and I am hisā! Arise from sin, arise from weariness, arise from the dalliances of this world, and come away. Rise up to the new life of grace! Come away and be one with God. Come away and be filled with love. Hence the Lord says: āI have come to set the earth on fireā. For he comes to fill us with his Holy Spirit who is the personal Love of the Father and the Son, and who descends like fire from heaven, burning away all impurities and sin, and intensifying the love of God within us until God lives in us, and we in God. This is the awesome truth of who God means you to be, and it is fire!
This, I hope youāll agree, is so much more exciting than self-realisation or becoming our deepest and truest selves. No, we are to become much more than ourselves. We are to become like God! Weāre to be divinised by grace, set on fire by the Holy Spirit, and bearers of the image of Christ in the world. Thus St Elizabeth of the Trinity said: āO consuming Fire! Spirit of love! Descend within me and reproduce in me, as it were, an incarnation of the Word; that I may be to him another humanity wherein he renews his mystery.ā God comes and renews the mystery of his being Emmanuel, God-with-us within us. God is with us here and now, in the present moment, and so he never abandons us but rather, he calls us to abandon ourselves into his love and care and providence. āArise my love, and come away.ā
But as St Augustine famously put it: āYou have made us and drawn us to yourself, [O God] and our heart is restless until it rests in you.ā The distractedness of akedia, therefore; the unquiet and agitation of our present times: are these not symptoms of the restless human heart that seeks God but does not know where to find him and rest in him, rest in his providence? St Augustine realises after his conversion that āyou were within, but I outside, seeking there for you⦠You were with me, but I was not with you.ā For we can be confused and distracted and attracted by the many different voices and good things of the world. There are so many things we want to do, so many things we want to accomplish, so many things that demand our attention and our energies.
However, in striving for the future, and worrying about the past, we might miss the grace of the present moment. And it is here, in the now, and in the interior life of our selves that God is with is, present through grace and with his providential will to teach us and to save us. St Teresa of Avila thus characterises the Christian life of prayer as an inward movement towards the centre of the soul, as if into the āinterior castleā, and she reminds us that Jesus said: āāI pray not for them only, but for all those who shall believe in me.ā He likewise said, āI am in them.ā How true, O my God! are these words, [says St Teresa] and how well does the soul in this prayer understand them! And we should all understand them, were it not through our own fault, since the words of Jesus Christ, our King and Lord, cannot fail. But as we do not prepare ourselves properly, and do not remove everything from us which might obstruct this light, hence we do not behold ourselves in this glass [or internal mirror] in which we look, and wherein our image is engravenā. In other words, if we will still ourselves, and focus on the words of the Lord, and pray to him who is with us and within us, we shall see him and hear him speaking to us, making his will known to us, and giving us the grace to do his will, and so to trust in his providence.
Hence the Lord says to his friend: āMartha, Martha, you are anxious and troubled about many things; one thing is needful. Mary has chosen the good portion.ā Mary has chosen to sit at the feet of the Lord, to rest and recline beside him, and to listen to his teaching. She has chosen to be a disciple of Christ. So too must we. The Lord says to you, āMy friend, my beloved, arise and come away.ā Ā
This interior prayer, as I have said, is the remedy of akedia, for the weariness, spiritual carelessness, and despondency of our age. Some people speak of mindfulness, but it is not enough to be aware of ourselves and our surroundings. No, God wants to give us so much more than just self-realisation! He wants us to be mindful of his love; he wants to love us and be loved by us; he wants to marry you! Therefore, let us adopt the position of Mary, and sit at the Lordās feet, listening to him. Very often we fill up our prayer time with our requests, our petitions, and our words. It is good to ask God for things, of course, and this is what novenas are for. But remember that the first novena was a time of quiet waiting with Our Lady, waiting to be set on fire by the Holy Spirit. So we must also use this time to listen and adore and just be with God, trusting in his providence. St Faustina put it beautifully: āWhen I see that the burden is beyond my strength, I do not consider or analyze it or probe into it, but I run like a child to the Heart of Jesus and say only one word to Him: āYou can do all things.ā And then I keep silent, because I know that Jesus Himself will intervene in the matter, and as for me, instead of tormenting myself, I use that time to love Him.ā
Prayer time is time to love God, and to be loved by God. Prayer is the crucible of love in which we are made to be who God means us to be. Through prayer we are inflamed by Godās love so that we in turn, bearing Christ within us, can set the world on fire, as St Catherine said. Therefore, St Augustine, having encountered the God of Love through prayer exclaims: āYou called, shouted, broke through my deafness; you flared, blazed, banished my blindness; you lavished your fragrance, I gasped; and now I pant for you; I tasted you, and now I hunger and thirst; you touched me, and I burned for your peace.ā
The Lord wishes to do this for you too: āI have come to set the earth on fire, and how I wish it were already blazing!ā
Listen to the recording of this talk, recorded Live in San Francisco, here.