Christ is “fire”

On the main altar in an Italian modern church, I saw Christ with his chest open. The artist depicted him in motion, as if Christ were descending from the altar. The Lord Jesus really came among us. Christ made such a visit in early AD. He came to visit this earth and also brought us a gift: Heavenly Father loves every person. The Lord Jesus came for this gift not only to die, but He came to show us that it is possible to love God even in these human conditions

It resembles fire. He feels full of love for his Heavenly Father. He is a living torch in relation to the Father. Therefore, he can say with pride: “I have come to cast fire on the ground; And what do I want? Just to make it flare up!” (Lk 12:49). He wants to cast the fire of love on the ground. Why? That the earth may burn with love for God, for heaven since the creation of the earth has a fire of love for mankind.

The Lord Jesus cannot deal with all mankind in any other way than through His individuals. So he also turns to me to accept the “fire of relationship” with God. When I accept this relationship, it is no longer possible for me to be a satisfied person who sits in his place. On the contrary, when I accept Christ into my life, holy peace begins to reign in my life. After all, can a boy who is at war and has his girl at home be completely satisfied? Can a child who does not feel the arms of mom be satisfied? And how can a believing person be satisfied when he has his Father in heaven?

Thus, if I accept Christ into my life, my restlessness, my indifference, will cease. I will stop feeling at home on this earth. When I receive Christ, my life will be a constant courtship of God, a constant diet of my own life in love for God. In that holy turmoil, the Holy Ghost is present, who wants to pour into one thing: me and God. St. Augustine says, “My soul is dissatisfied until it rests in you, O God.” In these words, we can feel in Augustine the fire of Christ after union in God.

The Lord Jesus wants this fire to be kindled within us. We know that if we do not put a log on the fire all the time, then it can happen that the fire will go out. If we do not put our feet on the fire of love for God, it will also extinguish. If we do not receive Christ into our lives through our sincere prayer, through glorifying God in the liturgy of the Mass, into our remorse through the sacrament of repentance, through the Sacrament of the Altar, the fire of love will not grow. I will be a person who has suffocated love in him.

The most terrible thing for a person is when he loves dies. This is when life becomes meaningless and is a burden. The Lord Jesus says, “Father against son and son against father, mother against daughter, and daughter against mother shall part…” (Lk 12:53). That is, if I am fed up with love for my God and I see that my daughter does not stand, for God, then I am divided by this fact with my own child. Christ separates a man from a woman. For if my husband, who is a witness of my love and a helper of my life, and is not permeated with a relationship with God, I will feel this division in pain. When my love for God is threatened, that’s when I become a person who guards and watches over it. If I am not sorry that someone is “christening, godly” next to me, swearing, insulting my love, and I listen to him happily, that is, there is a rather weak fire in my life, or he is just squinting.

If I scolded your mom for being so-and-so, as you would look at it as a good son and daughter, What would you tell me if I scolded your wife you love? Therefore, if someone threatens me with what burns in me, which is to me the great joy of love for God, I should separate myself in this a man, and disagree with him, because in me Christ is offended, whom I have received in my life as love. I love God and God in my life, it is something most holy and powerful. Nothing can happen to us in life worse than when love for God is extinguished in us.

The king says to the son:
– The human abyss is then the greatest and most terrible, when in a person dies what can lead him to another.
And he took his son to one of the spaces, where one leper lives in a hut.
– Look, he lives here. His wounds flow, fester, the body falls off. On the face it can be seen that this is a person who is no longer interested in anything. You can see it in his yawning. He is struck in the deepest. The love died with him… People come to him, but only to look at him. A person can never be enriched when someone admires him. They also come to throw his food and drink. He needs these people, but the most terrible thing for him is that no one needs him. Not a single girl requires it. She will not shake his hand to walk together in life with him. No man requires it because he does not sit down with him, fearing contagion, and not a single child because he cannot caress them. They condemned him to be in this area, they feed him, they regret it. But that love dies on him because no one requires it; this is more terrible than leprosy.

Such leprosy of our spiritual life can also affect us. It is sad that we do not accept Christ, that love dies in my prayers. But it becomes tragic when God does not accept me. I will become a leper, a crippled, because Christ will not stand for me, not just for a day or a year, but for all eternity! God will not give me a life of joy and happiness because I wanted to cripple myself, impoverish myself by not receiving the living fire that Christ brought, namely the Holy Ghost. Who among us would take a rotten apple to start eating it? We will throw it away, because it is not worth it. Who among us would have thought that God would stand for him if he did not accept into his life the living fire that Jesus Christ brought?God couldn’t do more for us. He sent His Son to our earth, he had to suffer, and as He himself says, “But by baptism I am to be baptized, and how narrow it is to me until it happens!” (Lk 12:50). Anguish gripped Jesus over how to bring the living God into the family.

He will bring me when I accept the fire of a relationship with God, even at the cost of being separated from others. Actually, this is quite normal. Where there is fire, there is no darkness. And where there is darkness, there is no fire, there is no light. If I receive the Holy Ghost sent by Jesus, there will be light in the presence of God in my life. On the contrary, if I do not accept the gift of Christ into my life, there will be no presence of God in it—the light of both love. Let us not be surprised that some do not stand, for God because they have suffocated the gift of Christ. Let us not be surprised, but let us cultivate friendship with God as the great light of the relationship between my life and His life. Otherwise, I am a cripple. Let us nail a banner to our minds: I must not cripple myself for eternity!