Twentieth Sunday of the year (Year C)

 Twentieth Sunday of the year August 17, 2025

Jer. 38:1-2, 4-6, 8-10; Heb. 12:1-4; Luke. 12:49-53

(Image courtesy: Google)

A few years ago, I read a story about a young medical student named Daniel who volunteered in a remote village in Africa. The village had no electricity, no clean water, and no proper medical facilities. Daniel worked long hours, often treating patients under the dim light of a kerosene lamp. One night, a fierce storm swept through the region, knocking over the only lamp in the clinic. Darkness filled the room. He could hear a young girl crying on a bed with a deep infection in her leg. Without light, he could not continue.

Then, out of nowhere, an elderly villager entered with a small candle. Its flame was barely steady against the wind, but it was enough. Daniel cleaned and dressed the wound by that single candlelight. Days later, the girl recovered completely.

Daniel said later, “That candle was more than light. It was hope. And I realised I wanted my life to be like that, however small, however fragile, bringing light into someone’s darkness.”

In today’s gospel Jesus talks about his mission by using the metaphor of lighting a fire, and he refers to his passion by using the image of a baptism to be received. Both fire and water are ambivalent symbols. Fire can be awesome, and it was seen by the Israelites to symbolize the presence of God. It was also terrifying in its power and symbolized its ability to cleanse, divide, destroy and purify, as the Jews experienced during their Exodus.

In the first reading, the prophet Jeremiah finds himself cast into a cistern because his words, God’s truth, made people uncomfortable. The darkness and mud around him must have felt suffocating. But God sent Ebed-melech, an unlikely rescuer, to lift him out. Jeremiah’s courage was the candlelight in a nation’s storm.

In the Gospel, Jesus say, “I have come to bring fire to the earth, and how I wish it were already blazing!” He is not talking about destructive fire, but the fire of the Holy Spirit, the fire of truth and love that purifies and transforms. Fire brings warmth in the cold, light in the darkness, and energy to those weary on the journey. But fire also disrupts comfort. It forces a choice. Jesus even warns that this fire will cause division, because not everyone will welcome the radical love and justice it demands.

Daniel’s candle in that dark clinic is a small image of the fire Jesus speaks about. That flame cost the villager something, walking into the storm, holding it steady in the wind, but it brought healing. So too, Christ’s fire in us will cost us something: comfort, popularity, perhaps even safety. But it will bring life to others.

The Letter to the Hebrews today urges us to “run with perseverance the race marked out for us, keeping our eyes fixed on Jesus.” A race is not run in comfort. It takes endurance, focus, and a willingness to press on even when tired. And here’s the beautiful paradox: when we carry the fire of Christ, it not only burns within us, but it also spreads.

Like Daniel in the clinic, you may feel your light is too small to matter. But in someone else’s darkness, your small flame may be enough to heal, enough to give hope, enough to spark another flame. And that is how the fire Jesus longed for begins to blaze, one act of courage, one word of truth, one offering of love at a time.

So, this week, let us not fear the fire. Let us ask Christ to set our hearts ablaze. And when the storms come, may we walk into them, candle in hand, bringing light where there is none, until the whole world is set alight with His love.

Happy Sunday