I am come to send fire on the earth; and would that it were already kindled?
All Commentaries on Luke 12:49 Go To Luke 12
Cornelius a Lapide
AD 1637
I came to came to cast fire on the earth; and what will I, if it is already kindled? The Arabic has, "What will I but that it be kindled?" So the Egyptian, Ethiopic, and Persian. It is uncertain whether Christ said this at the same time as the preceding. For S. Luke joins the words of Christ together, although spoken at different times. It may be connected with the preceding and following thus: Christ after much teaching of the Apostles and faithful, may, at last, have stated the primary duty that He was sent into the world by the Father to fulfil, namely, that He should send fire from heaven on the Apostles, that they, when inflamed by it, might kindle it in the rest of the other faithful; for by this the Apostles would fully and efficaciously perform the work that had been given them by Christ of evangelising the whole world and converting it to Him, and the faithful would exactly carry on the instructions of the Apostles.
Symbolically, S. Ambrose, on Ps. cxix. (Serm. viii.) says: "God is a light to lighten and a fire to burn up the chaff of men"s vices." "He is light," he says, "to shine like a lantern for one who is walking in darkness, so that whoever seeks it in its brightness cannot err. He is fire to consume the straw and chaff of our works, as gold, the more it is refined, is better proved." So Clement of Alexandria in his exhortations to the Gentiles: "The Saviour has many voices and methods of man"s salvation. In threatening He admonishes; by prohibitions He converts; with tears He pities; (in songs) He speaks through the cloud; (in songs) by fire He strikes terror. The flame is a mark at once of grace and of fear. If you be obedient it is a light—if disobedient, a consuming fire."
It may be asked—What is this fire? Firstly, Tertullian (Against Marcion, IV. xxix.), Maldonatus, and F. Lucas answer that it is hatred dissensions, tribulations, and persecutions by unbelievers of the faith and of the Apostles, and the faithful of Christ. These, indirectly, and occasionally, Christ and the Apostles raised by preaching the Gospel and the new religion of the crucified Saviour. "Christ," says Tertullian, "will better interpret the quality of this fire, ver51 , "Think you that I am come to give peace in the earth? I tell you, Nay, but rather division, for there shall be from henceforth," &c. Christ means then the fire of destruction when He refuses peace: such as the conflict was, such will the burning be by which Christ will overthrow idolatry and all (manners of) wickedness, and will reduce them to ashes. Hence He would stir up all the nations that were addicted to their own idols against Himself and the Apostles, to extinguish by every means this new instrument of destruction of their ancient superstition. To this applies all that Christ subjoins in explanation of this fire, verses50-53."
Secondly, and more fitly, S. Cyril in the Catena, and Jansenius think this fire to be the preaching of the Gospel, for Christ directly wished for this, that by its means He might warm the hearts of men by divine fire, as Ps. cxix140 , "Thy Word is very pure" (Vulgate, ignitum).
Thirdly, and best, S. Ambrose and Origen on this passage, S. Athanasius on the Common Essence of Father and Song of Solomon , S. Cyril (Book iv. on Leviticus), S. Jerome (Book ii Apol. against Ruffinus), S. Augustine (Serm108 de Tempore), S. Gregory (Hom30 in Evang.), by "fire" understand the Holy Ghost and His gifts, especially charity, devotion, fervour, zeal, which; say Euthymius and Theophylact, "He kindles in the souls of the faithful." This fire also kindles the lamps of the faithful, according to the words, "Love is strong as death, jealousy is cruel as the grave, the coals thereof are coals of fire which hath a most vehement flame." Song viii6. See what has been said thereon. The Church so explains it when on the Saturday after the Pentecost she prays thus in the Mass, "We beseech Thee, 0 Lord, may the Holy Spirit inflame us without fire which our Lord Jesus Christ sent upon earth and earnestly desired might be enkindled."
"By this fire," says S. Ambrose, "was Cleophas incited when he said, "Did not our heart burn within us, while He spake to us in the way, and while He opened to us the Scriptures?" Luke 24:32. Thus this fire of1ove and ardour embraces that of tribulation which has the first place. For this fire, the Apostles, inflamed with the love of Christ, overcame; and so provoked it, for it pressed upon them, as Christ foretold in the following, Luke 12:49. So said also S. Paul, "Who shall separate us from the love of Christ? . . . I am persuaded that neither death nor life," Romans 8:35-38. By the same fire was Ignatius urged in his Epistle to the Romans: "I wish," he said, "that I may enjoy the beasts that await me, which I pray may be swift for my destruction and my punishment, and may be allured to devour me. I am the wheat of Christ, to be ground by the teeth of beasts, that I may be found the bread of the world." This desire Christ fulfilled when He sent the Holy Spirit upon the Apostles and faithful, in the form of tongues of fire at Pentecost, Acts 2:3 Upon which S. Chrysostom says (Hom. iv.). "This fire has burnt up the sins of the world like fire;" and again, as we may suppose: "As a man on fire (igneus homo) if he falls into the midst of stubble will not be hurt, but will rather exert his strength, so it happens here," that the Apostles as men on fire with the Spirit (homines ignei) should not be hurt by their persecutors, but rather convert them to the faith of Christ and inflame them. See the gifts of fire which I have counted up—enumerated and applied to the Love of God, Leviticus 9:23, and Acts xxiii. and Acts 2:3, and Dionysius on the Ecclesiastical Hierarchy xv, where he shows by many analogies that fire is the most apt symbol and hieroglyphic of God and the angels, and most fitly represents their similitude in imitating Him, according to the words of Deuteronomy 4:24: "Thy God is a consuming fire;" and Hebrews 1:7, "Who maketh His angels spirits and His ministers a flame of fire." With this fire burned Elijah, of whom it is written, "and Elias the prophet stood up as a fire, and his word burnt like a torch," Sirach 48:1 , and therefore he was carried up into heaven in a chariot of fire; and Elisha cried out, "My father, my father, the chariot of Israel and the horsemen thereof." Consumed by this fire the martyrs despised their lives, nay, rather courted the flames, either because they did not feel them, like the three children in the furnace at Babylon, or that they overcame them by their heroic virtue, as did S. Laurence, of whom it is sung, Psalm 17:3, "Thou hast visited me in the night (Vulg.) with fire." Hard indeed and bitter was this test of fire, but the love of God conquered the pain; the torments of the Lamb overcame the torment of the fire; the memory of Christ, I mean, who suffered for us still more bitterly. "The fire of love could not be mastered by thy flames, 0 tyrant," said S. Leo in his sermon on S. Laurence. "The fire that burnt outwardly was more sluggish than that which burnt within. Thou ragedst, as a persecutor against the Martyr thou ragedst, and increased his palm whilst thou augmented his punishment;" and S. Augustine on Laurence: "The blessed Laurence was consumed by this fire, but he felt not the heat of the flames, and whilst he burnt with the love of Christ, he regarded not the punishment of the persecutor." So S. Ignatius, writing to the Romans , "Let fire," he says, "the breaking of my limbs by wild beasts, the dismembering of my body, the breaking to pieces of my whole frame, and all the torments of the devil come upon me, so only that I may have enjoyment of Christ." Of the same kind were also the Christians in the time of Tertullian, who (in50 chap. Apol.) writes thus to the Gentiles: "Although you now call us Sarmentitii because we are burnt at the stake by a heap of faggots (sarmentorum), and Senarii because we are broken on the wheel, yet this is the garment of our victory, this our robe of glory, in this chariot we triumph." Are not these terrestrial seraphim more brave and ardent than the celestial? The latter abound with the fire of love only, the former with that of pain and martyrdom also, for they are living holocausts of God. In our own age, in the same fire, were and are consumed the Japanese, who were burnt to death in a slow fire for many hours, and remained in them unsubdued and unconquered like adamant, to death. Many of them were of our society, standard-bearers as it were of (the) faith; among them was R. P. Camillus Constantius of Italy, who remained for three hours in the fire immovable, nay, even joyful and exulting; (continually) crying out to God with a loud voice, or animating his companions to constancy, or stirring up the people, a thing we have not hitherto read of in the lives of the Martyrs, until the flames seized on his inner organs, and deprived him at once of voice and life, that so he might die a glorious victim of a holocaust to God.
Hail, heroes of illustrious souls, champions of the faith, a spectacle to God, to angels, and to men. Burning with divine fire you resigned, for the faith of Christ, your bodies to the flames, and your souls to God; and from amidst those flames, rejoicing with the voice of swans, you covered yourselves with merits, amazed the tyrants, filled and adorned Japan with Christians, your society with heroic virtues, the world with fame, the Church with glory, the heavens with the laurels of fresh champions. For ever live your glory, your unconquered fortitude, your fire and ardour of heart, by which you will have illuminated and inflamed Japan, as long as the course of ages shall endure.
Thus thinking, S. Eulatia, burning with the desire of martyrdom, proceeded, without the knowledge of her parents, to her conflict, and, as Prudentius tells us in his hymn3 , when she was being consumed by the flames, she sang a hymn "On the Crowns:"—
Ergo tortor, adure,
Divide membra coacta luto
Solvere rem fragilem, facile Esther ,
Non penetrabitur, interior,
Exagitante dolore, animus.
Come, thou tormentor, come and burn,
And cut, and wound, and slay,
Dissever thou these limbs of mine,
Joined but by feeble clay.
How easy "tis, so frail a thing,
Entirely to destroy;
Tormenting pain can never touch
My inner spirit"s joy.
And thus, in the thirteenth year of her age, surrounded by flames,
Virgo, citum cupiens obitum,
Appetit et bibit ore rogum.
For speedy death the Virgin wish"d,
And with a joyful smile
The bitter cup of death she drank,
Upon the funeral pile.
The martyr, in the form of a dove, flew up to heaven.
And what will I if it be already kindled? The Arabic has, "What will I but its kindling?" S. Jerome to Nepotian, "How I long for it to be kindled!" Origen (Hom. v. on Ezekiel), "I would it were kindled;" Philaster on the Heresies (cap. ult.), "How I wish that it were kindled;" that Isaiah , as the Syriac reads, "If now at length it were kindled." SS. Hilary on Ps. cxx, Theophylact, Euthymius, and Cyril in the Catena, "I wish nothing but that this fire were at length kindled; if it were, there is nothing else I desire, this is my one only prayer." Both readings amount to the same thing—"I came to cast fire upon the earth, and what will I if it is already kindled?"—that everywhere throughout the world He might kindle the earthly, lukewarm, frigid, nay, rocky, ice-cold, and rigid hearts of men, by His words and example, with the fierce heat of fervour, and turn them into the fire of love. So did our own S. Ignatius, the founder of the Society of Jesus. But to accomplish this there is need of much warmth and zeal. Hebrews , therefore, who would inspire others with this fire, must first kindle it strongly in himself.
Ardeat orator qui vult accendere plebem
Wouldst thou enkindle others" hearts?
—then burn,
0 Orator, thyself.
