I came to cast fire on the earth, and would that it were already kindled!
In the plan of St. Luke’s Gospel, Jesus is on his way to Jerusalem, travelling with determination towards his Passion, Death and Resurrection. The first incident in that journey recounted by St. Luke is an unhappy attempt to enter a Samaritan village. There James and John ask if they should call down fire from heaven to burn these people up (cf. Gn 19:24). But Jesus rebukes them (Lk 9:54).
Although all the other decorations are down, our Christmas crib is still up, until the 2nd of February. Through it we love to meditate on the ordinariness of Jesus: on his littleness, his dependence, his vulnerability, his likeness to us. Today though, in his first public miracle according to St. Mark, we see some hint of his divine power.
God so loved the world that he gave his only-begotten Son, that whoever believes in him should not perish, but have eternal life.
However many times we hear this text repeated, it retains its power to astonish us, to humble, thrill, amaze, move, inspire; to bring us to our knees in worship and thanksgiving, or to lift us up in joyful wonder. John 3:16 is a good text for the Feast of the Holy Trinity, because today especially we step back, as it were, simply to praise God: for what he is, and for what he has done; to contemplate his greatness and glory, and to ponder our eternal destiny with him.
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