God’s Word is Divisive

This is a computer-generated transcription that has been included to make the homily searchable.  It has not been verified by the author. 

“Do you think that I have come to give peace on earth? No, I tell you, but rather division.” These are shocking words of our Lord, because division is so painful, division in the family, division in the Church. And I think they help shed a lot of light on what’s going on right now. Our little community, our little Mission of Divine Mercy, is often accused of being very divisive, and the pain of division is intense, is deep. We’re living a very confusing time in which there is a lot of division. Good people, people who are committed Catholics are divided about certain things. And so, the readings today help us have light on this confusing situation. The first reading is from Jeremiah. It says, “in those days, the princes said to the king, Jeremiah ought to be put to death. He is demoralizing the soldiers who are left in this city and all the people by speaking such things to them. He is not interested in the welfare of our people, but in their ruin.” So, accusations against Jeremiah. Jeremiah has a hard mission, a hard message, because he’s seeing dangers that other people aren’t seeing, and so he’s very unpopular. His message is very unpopular. This is a time where the Babylonian Empire is growing very strong and is a big danger. And his message that they should not try to rebel, but they should, on the contrary, submit to the Babylonians, is a very unpopular one. And you could contrast it with Isaiah, over a century earlier, I think with the Assyrians, gave a different message – telling the people that God wanted them not to give in to the Assyrians. So that might seem also confusing, but we have that phrase in English, don’t shoot the messenger. And that’s kind of the situation here. If there’s a good, wise doctor who has to give us a difficult diagnosis, we shouldn’t blame the doctor for this hard diagnosis. And that’s, again, the situation of Jeremiah. And in contrast to Jeremiah, there’s a lot of false prophets at that time speaking of peace. And this is what the Ignatius Catholic Study Bible says. It says, “these false prophets at that time claimed to speak the word of God, but they were not sent by Him. Instead, they spoke empty words of comfort, and they made a living telling people what they wanted to hear.” The false prophets told the people what they wanted to hear, comforting words. It goes on. “The false prophets counted Jeremiah’s dire warnings of judgment with reassurance that Judah was safe from national threats. They proclaimed peace, peace when there was no peace, and they said that the Lord’s temple in Jerusalem was a guarantee against the danger of foreign conquest.” So, the false prophets were proclaiming a comforting message, don’t worry, everything will be peaceful. And Jeremiah had a very different message. But if the people had listened to Jeremiah, so much tragedy could have been avoided. They did not listen to Jeremiah. Jerusalem was captured and destroyed. The temple was destroyed. Many of the people were slaughtered, and most of the rest were led into exile. And that could have been avoided if they had listened to the prophet that God was sending them. And so, Jeremiah’s life is full of suffering. That same Ignatius, Catholic Study Bible says, “Jeremiah is sometimes called the weeping prophet. And for good reason, apart from a small group of friends and sympathizers, he was disliked by the majority of his contemporaries, including the royal and religious authorities of Judah.” So very few were responding, very few were listening. Most of the people and the authorities rejected Him, even the religious authorities. And it’s often said that he is the person in the Old Testament who seems to most closely resemble our Lord. It says that he was affectionate and gentle. He just wanted a simple, ordinary life, but he always had to proclaim such a harsh, unpopular message. So, it wasn’t what he wanted to say. It wasn’t what the people wanted to hear, but it’s what they needed to hear. He wanted peace, and he found himself always in conflict. And so, it seemed that his 40-year ministry, so it’s a long ministry, it seemed like it was not successful. Most people didn’t listen to him, the things that he was warning about happened. But later on, when the people were in exile, after all that tragedy, they meditated on his words and inspired conversion to come back to God and trust in His mercies. But Jeremiah not only had a difficult message, but he didn’t even have – scripture doesn’t speak of any miracles that he had to convince the people. So that’s probably one of the reasons he had such a small group of people who responded. God wanted people just to hear the holiness of his message and contrast it with the with the immorality and infidelity that they were living, to realize that what he was saying was true. And I think, for our little mission, Jeremiah is a very, very important guide, because our little mission is also having to give a very unpopular, controversial message; and so far, I mean, without great impressive miracles or apparitions, and it’s caused a lot of problems. We’re just talking to our canonist again, the process against me, which will probably, they think they’re going to seek excommunication against me that’s moving forward. And so, this is a very challenging situation, and also it’s just a small, small portion, who believe this difficult message of the Mission of Divine Mercy. I think later on, there’ll be many more, but right now, it’s a small portion. You all are part of that small portion, as are other people who have contacted us from many different places throughout our country and throughout the world, but it’s still a small portion. And so, the example Jeremiah, as I say, I think it’s very hopeful for understanding our situation. And then that leads us to today’s Gospel, where Jesus says, “I came,” – so these are very intense, dramatic, passionate words of Jesus, – “I came to cast fire upon the earth and would that it were already kindled. I have a baptism to be baptized with and how I am in agony until it is accomplished. Do you think that I have come to give peace on the earth? No, I tell you, but rather division. For henceforth, in one house, there will be five divided, three against two and two against three. They will be divided, father against son, son against father, mother against daughter and daughter against her mother. Mother-in-law against her daughter in law and daughter in law against her mother-in-law.” We want peace. We want peace in our families. We want peace in the Church, and true peace is a sign of God, and we know that Jesus is the Prince of Peace, and the angels announced at his birth, “peace to men of good will.” And yet Jesus causes division. And even when Jesus was presented in the temple Simeon, the old man. Simeon, inspired by the Holy Spirit, came to encounter them, and it says, “he blessed them and said to Mary, His mother, “Behold, this child is set for the fall and rising of many in Israel and to be a sign of contradiction,” a sign of contradiction. And the gospel, especially St John’s gospel, shows these different responses to God’s word, that God’s word, when Jesus speaks, it often divides. For some, it’s a word that inspires, illuminates, consoles, for others, it is heresy, it is blasphemy. And in St. Matthew’s Gospel, the parallel passage to this Gospel we had today, it speaks of a sword. It says, “Do not think that I have come to bring peace on earth. I have not come to bring peace but a sword.” Not peace, but a sword. The Old Testament often speaks of God’s word as a sword that cuts and divides. So, this is hard to understand. Jesus tells His apostles that He who lives by the sword will die by the sword. He’s rejecting that violence, and yet here we’re speaking of the Word of God as a sword. So, this is challenging to understand. Jesus wants true peace, true peace. He is the prince of peace. He is the source of true peace. The night before He died, he said, “Peace I leave with you.” We hear that in the Mass, “My peace I give to you, but not as the world do I give to you.” So, He is distinguishing His true peace from a false peace, and that same night before He died, He spoke of how He wanted us all to be one. But true unity only comes when we personally, individually choose Jesus. It comes from our union with Him. So that requires a personal decision, a faith in Jesus Christ, the truth, putting Him above all else, even above family unity. We see people in the Gospel who have to choose Jesus above the unity and the understanding of their family. And so, as I say, I think all this sheds a lot of light on the struggle that our little Mission of Divine Mercy in this reconquest, because the Lord is speaking now of a reconquest, and it’s not just for our little mission, but it’s for anyone who will respond. And that message seems very divisive, and it is divisive in a sense. But why is it divisive? Is it divisive because it’s false, because it’s coming from the evil one, or is it divisive because it is true, because it is coming from God? That’s very important to distinguish. It’s certainly not a message that we’re sharing to gain popularity. It’s not, you know, it’s not a PR campaign. And I’ve said, I think that there’s, like, two stages. We’re in the first stage now, where this message is very controversial. It’s hard to believe how we’re saying that this is the Lord Himself who’s given us these prophetic messages, just like Jeremiah had no proof, but it just had to be faith. His role was just to be faithful to what the Lord was telling him and say, “This is what I believe the Lord is saying.” That’s what we’re trying to do, share this message. And it is, as I say, a small portion who have responded. There’s a lot of good people, including good people who have been close to the mission but who don’t, who can’t follow this. And so that’s very painful. It’s very painful for all of us. I think later on, there’s a lot of good people who are not able to believe now, but who will believe when the manifestations the Lord has promised begin. And I’ll share with you, this was a little, just a little passage from a message the Lord gave us to our community just a few months ago, May 15th. And so that was just about a week after Leo’s election. And so afterwards, the Lord gave us a message which was a public message, but first, he gave a message which was just for our community. And I said, I’ll read you a little passage from that. He says, “I raise you up as a sign of contradiction, as a light to light the darkness of the storm, as the blade that separates my works from the works of satan, as the split in the road placed so that my children decide, once and for all which path they will follow.” So let me read that again. “I raise you up as a sign of contradiction, as a light to light the darkness of the storm, as the blade that separates my works from the works of satan, as the split in the road play so that my children decide once and for all which path they will follow.” Yesterday, we had the passage the reading in the Mass yesterday was a passage from Joshua, leading the people into the promised land, in which he said, “choose who you will follow, the Lord God of Israel or the gods of the other people.” But you have to make a choice. You can’t stand in the middle. You can’t compromise. God won’t accept the compromise the God of Israel. I was saying yesterday that the pagan gods were very tolerant. There were 1000s of pagan gods, and they would bring in strangers gods, and they could build a temple to them. That was fine. They had all sorts of many, many gods, but the God of Israel was intolerant. He would not accept to share his people with any other god, who were false gods. And so that’s what the Lord is. Something similar, he’s saying, I have put you as a split in the road, so that as a fork in the road, so that my children decide once and for all which path they will follow. That is, it’s calling for a decision. You know, that happened so many times like there’s it was Elijah who said to the people, when there’s all the priests and false prophets of Baal that the people are following. Elijah is the only one left, the only true prophet left. And he says to the people, “choose whom you will follow,” because he says, You can’t keep on going back and forth, back and forth, either you follow the Lord God of Israel, or you follow Baal in the gods of the world. But you have to make a choice. And the Lord is saying that that’s what our little mission is being called, to be a blade, to be a fork in a road, to be a sign of contradiction, which is not what we plan to be, not what we want it to be. It’s not a comfortable position to be a blade, to be a sword, but that’s what our Lord is asking us to do. And so, to conclude, these are difficult and confusing times, but there are also times of great opportunity. Times of division and choice are painful, but there are also times of great opportunity. And the greatest example is when our Lord preached His gospel message; it caused a lot of divisions, but it was times of extraordinary opportunity, because for those who chose Him, they didn’t have an easy path, but they had a path of union with God Himself. And so, this is hard, but it’s also a great opportunity of not compromising, of not responding halfway. Remember what our Lord says in the apocalypse. He says, “Because you are neither hot nor cold, but lukewarm, I’m going to spit you out of my mouth.” And that’s what we sense in the passion of, I mean, the passion and the sense of the intensity of our Lord in the Gospel today, of a fire, a fire to be kindled. So, he’s calling for a decision. His Word of the Word of God, calls for decision, it cuts, it divides. Like Jeremiah, it is often controversial and unpopular, but that’s precisely why it’s needed. A prophetic word is needed when there’s something that we don’t understand and that it’s hard for us to accept, that’s when especially we need God to say it. So, we believe that God, and this is what we’re proclaiming, even if, even if we’re going to be sanctioned because of this, the archdiocese is building a case against me. They’re interviewing witnesses against me, and they’re seeking evidence, and I haven’t hidden at all. I’ve said very publicly, we’ve published on our website, we haven’t hid this at all. What we believe, what we believe the Lord is saying. We believe that the Lord is leading, calling his people, leading them to the great reconquest, not the rejection of His Church. He loves His Church, but precisely because He loves it, He wants it to be freed from the corruption. And so, He’s calling for a great reconquest. And I believe that He’s calling you and me to join Him in this great battle, this great reconquest. So, with Jeremiah and with our Blessed Mother, we ask the Holy Spirit to help us be faithful to Him. And I’ll end now by just reading this passage that we heard today from the Letter to the Hebrews. “Since we are surrounded by so great a cloud of witnesses,” that is the angels and saints, “let us lay aside every weight and sin which clings so closely, and let us run with perseverance the race that is set before us, put aside all the compromises looking to Jesus, the pioneer and perfecter of our faith, who for the joy that was set before Him, endured the cross, despising its shame, and is seated at the right hand of the throne of God.” Amen. 

KEYWORDS / PHRASES:
Luke 12:49-53
Jeremiah 38:4-6, 8-10
Hebrews 12:1-4