Responses to Love

Gospel: Luke 12: 49-53

We often associate love with unity and bringing people together, and certainly love has that effect.  In attending weddings and other events where love is celebrated we see the power of love to bring people into harmony and unity.  However, for as many people who come together to celebrate love, we also find as many people who have the opposite reaction to love.  How many novels and stories tell the tales of animosities that react negatively to love in the world.

It is this dynamic to which Jesus refers in today's Gospel.  He comes to cast the fire of love on the world.  He goes from place to place extending that love to others through healing, liberating, and nourishing everyone without distinction or discrimination.  And we see the different reactions to his good deeds.  Some respond with love and unity.  Others respond with bitterness and hatred which ultimately leads to his arrest and execution.

Consider the reaction in our world to people who seek to care for immigrants, migrants, refugees, the poor, and the marginalized in our midst.  Some are inspired by such love and come together to care for those in need.  Others, however, show hatred toward the marginalized groups and those who care for them.  We might well find ourselves stunned and perplexed by this phenomenon in the world, its existence is certainly empirically verifiable.