Do you think that I have come to establish peace on the earth?

The angels sang at Jesus’ birth: “Glory to God in the highest and on earth peace to those on whom his favor rests” (Luke 2:14). When we celebrate the Feast of Christmas, the birth of the Incarnate Word, God-with-us, we depict it with beautiful nativity scenes, a lone star radiant in the peaceful night sky, simple shepherds worshipping the newborn King of kings and Prince of Peace laying in a manger. It is only those who participate at Mass on weekdays who immediately get plunged in division. Starting on December 26, the Mass celebrates a number of individuals who paid the price for their faith in Christ with their very life. Saint Stephen is martyred, the Holy Innocents are silent witnesses with their death to the birth of the Son of God, and Saint Thomas Becket who engaged in conflict with Henry II, King of England, over the rights and privileges of the Church is murdered in Canterbury Cathedral by followers of the king.

To be a disciple of Jesus is to be invited to martyrdom either through the giving of one’s life for one’s belief in Christ or through the living of one’s life out of one’s belief in Christ and adherence to his teaching.

Do you think that I have come to establish peace on the earth? No, I tell you, but rather division.

This word of the Savior is foreboding. This division sets people against one another. It certainly is easy to brush this aside as we hear the examples given by the Lord himself: father against son and son against father, mother against daughter and daughter against mother and so forth. Someone who has followed her faith at the cost of acceptance within her own family, however, will not read those lines so glibly. I’m thinking of Saint Elizabeth Ann Seton.

Elizabeth Ann Bayley was born in New York City to a prominent Episcopal family on August 28, 1774. After seven happy years of marriage to William Magee Seton, her husband became very ill with tuberculosis. She travelled with him to Italy hoping to find a cure, but he died there in 1803. While in Italy, Elizabeth discovered Catholicism through the kindness of friends who offered her comfort as she grieved her husband’s death, inviting her to Mass with them. A year later in New York, Elizabeth officially converted to Roman Catholicism. Her choice to convert resulted in three years of financial struggle and social discrimination. She opened a boarding house for boys, but when the students’ parents discovered that she was Catholic they removed their sons from her house. Two years later she was invited to move to Baltimore with her family and to open a school for girls. Women began to join her work and, after moving to Emmitsburg, Maryland, she founded the Sisters of Charity of St. Joseph, the first congregation of women religious in the United States.

Do you think that I have come to establish peace on the earth? No, I tell you, but rather division.

Each of us is called to this living martyrdom, for the Lord we follow died, out of amazing love for us, on the Cross. We are worth that much in God’s eyes that he calls us to a heroic living (and sometimes dying) in imitation of our Savior. This division to which Jesus calls us may be as simple as not contributing to slander or it may be as consequential as walking away from a potential financial windfall that is at the expense of some group “on the peripheries.” It could be quiet decisions made in private or could entail very public statements. I think of Saint Francis of Assisi who renounced his wealth and his inheritance to follow the call of God to rebuild his Church. Summoned by his father before the Bishop to account for bolts of cloth he had sold for the poor, Francis famously removed his garments and gave them to his father saying, “Until now I have called you my father on earth. But henceforth I can truly say: Our Father who art in heaven.”  Francis renounced the considerable wealth of his family to embrace the life of poverty and joy to which he was called.

Today you may wish to consider: Where does the division established by Christ cut through your career? Your relationships? Your life as a Christian?

Praying with this Passage of Scripture

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