Twentieth Sunday in Ordinary Time

August 17, 2025

GOSPEL MEDITATION

During my baseball career, my best coach often said, “You shouldn’t be worried if I yell at you. Be worried if I don’t. If I stop pushing you, it means I don’t think you have any more potential.” He demanded a lot, and I knew it meant he saw that I could be something special on the baseball field.

Jesus says some demanding words to us this week. “Do you think I have come to establish peace on the earth?” he asks, “No, tell you, but rather division” (Luke 12:51). He wants you and me–in fact, all the earth–to participate in the luminous glory of God. That’s why he speaks of himself as a divine arsonist. Divine fire is like a good coach: it demands the removal of all that obstructs the achievement of the lofty goal.

How is your life demanding right now? That inconvenient family situation, the unfair boss at work, the kids who reject their parents’ wishes, the nagging health issue? Maybe things would be more peaceful, devoid of these seemingly arbitrary difficulties. But for us who believe in the one who comes to set the earth of fire, we should be much more worried if he stops demanding so much from us. In fact, let’s thank him for it. He sees how glorious we can become.

–Father John Muir

EVERYDAY STEWARDSHIP

Today’s readings set a high bar for us Christian stewards, reminding us that a stewardship way of life is meant to be a challenging way of life.

The stewardship way of life helps us to stay in good racing shape. By putting God first in all areas of our lives, we rid ourselves of the burden and sinfulness of over-attachment to ourselves and our things. We get lean and fit and strong for the long race to Heaven. We begin to look and act more like Jesus, the leader and perfecter of faith.

The stewardship way of life sets a high bar indeed. But deeply embraced, this way of life focused on God and others will make us the saints we are called to be. 

2025 Catholic Stewardship Consultants

PRACTICING CATHOLIC – RECOGNIZE GOD IN YOUR ORDINARY MOMENTS

Mini reflection: If we let Christ set fire to our lives, what would that fire burn away? What dead and festering undergrowth in our souls would be consumed by the flames? What promise of future holiness would sprout from beneath the ashes?

 The Fire

This past week I have been reading a biography of St. Francis of Assisi. I admit I didn’t know much about Francis going into the book, but I always had this image of him as a hippie — an easygoing nature-lover who sang about peace and let animals climb on him.

I’m not sure where that caricature of Francis came from, but since I’ve been reading this book I’ve come to see that it’s not true at all. He was a lover of nature, yes. A poet who sang of God’s peace, yes. And I’m sure he let a few animals climb on him from time to time (he did live in a hut in the woods).

But St. Francis of Assisi wasn’t the lost fourth member of Peter, Paul and Mary. He was a man on fire. He was a man burning.

Francis walked around barefoot and slept on the ground. He abandoned a life of wealth to embrace the material poverty that Christ experienced. He embarrassed his family and they disowned him. When his father would encounter Francis in the streets of Assisi, he would curse him.

Sometimes we get this idea that Christianity is a comfortable, cozy thing. We give our lives to Christ, and we expect to feel instantly satisfied, happy, safe and warm. But the saints knew better.

The saints knew that Christ had not come to wrap us in a warm blanket. Christ has come to set us on fire. And though fire is often seen as a sign of death and destruction, it is also the precursor of new life.

Think of a field of native plants and how it benefits so richly from a controlled burn — an action that clears away detritus and releases nutrients back into the soil.

If we let Christ set fire to our lives, what would that fire burn away? What dead and festering undergrowth in our souls would be consumed by the flames? What promise of future holiness would sprout from beneath the ashes?

– Colleen Jurkiewicz Dorman