
<p>The gospels too tell us about these two baptisms: the baptism of water and the baptism of fire. Earlier in the Gospel of Luke, John the Baptist had warned that the baptism of fire was coming, just before he baptizes Jesus in the Jordan. When the people that John was baptizing were wondering whether he himself might be the Messiah, John answered by saying: "I am baptizing you in water, but there is one who is to come who is mightier than I... He will baptize you with the Holy Spirit and with fire". And that fire, John goes on to say, is the same fire that will burn the chaff that has been separated from the wheat on the threshing floor. But no one is spared from it: it doesn't just consume the wicked; it's a fire that also purifies the just. Now in today's gospel we hear Jesus tell us about that fire in the next baptism that he himself has to undergo, which of course is his being plunged into his passion. The fire that he is going to light in the world is going to be sparked off by his death and Resurrection and Ascension. And that fire that they are going to bring is going to bring conflict, not peace, at least at first.</p>
<p>It's of course ironic, you might have already noted, that the angels sing about peace in this very gospel of Luke in the beautiful idyllic stories surrounding Jesus' birth, quoted every Sunday in the "Glory to God" that we sing at Mass. Maybe that's the peace of the first Baptism, the peace of the promise, the knowledge of our union with God, the experience of our inner nature, our hearts into which the love of God is poured. But that love of God is also meant to flow back out of our hearts like a stream of life giving water (so John says) or, perhaps even better, like a river of fire, the fire of justice, the fire of mercy, the fire of the gospel.</p>
<p>The problem is, if we're not careful, that first peace, the peace of the baptism of water, the peace of the promise, could wind up being what John Cassian (in Conference IV.7) calls a pax perniciosa––"pernicious peace," where we sit on the laurels of our religiosity or our presumed sanctity or our smug self-righteousness, all of which Jesus is always pillarying. Cassian uses that phrase––pax perniciosa––to describe a state where there seems to be no conflict between flesh and spirit, and then he suggests that, this side of heaven, there is always going to be some kind of conflict between flesh and spirit; that's the normal state of affairs. That peace, once God has invaded our heart, doesn't stay peaceful for long. It sets us at odds with all that is not godly; it starts up a new conflict, the conflict with the disordered self, what Paul calls the "old self." Mind you, that doesn't necessarily mean what we think it means; it's not necessarily the war of the body against the soul. It means more the war between the ways of God and the ways of "the world." Those ways of the world, Paul tells us, are things like fornication, impurity, passion, evil desire and especially the greed that is actually idolatry, not to mention anger, temper and insults. But none of those things are really sins of the flesh itself, nor are they the fault of earth or creation. Those are all really sins of the mind, not of the body. Evagrius taught that it's not even emotions or passions themselves that are the problem, but disordered passions, things that are out of right relationship with spirit.</p>
<p>John Main wrote about this pax perniciosa a lot also in regards to meditation and prayer, warning about "a kind of anaesthetized, floating piety," and the sopor letalis––the "lethal sleep" that Cassian writes about in Conference X.8. This is a real temptation in the spiritual life we have to watch for. Even in prayer, only if we lose our life, only if we allow our life to be burned up and purified, even to somehow experience prayer as a kind of dying––to our small self, to our petty desires, to our unhinged will run riot, even dying to our thoughts and imagination––only then will we find our real self hidden with Christ in God.</p>
<p>There is a section of C. S. Lewis' book The Great Divorce that I loved so much I turned it into a song:</p>
<p>Things grow farther apart as they reach perfection;<br />good becomes different from evil and then becomes<br />different from other goods.<br />We don't live in a world where all the<br />roads go "round and round" in circles:<br />every road forks in two, and two again,<br />and we always choose.</p>
<p>There is a popular saying that "All roads lead up the mountain." Of course, that is not true. I do believe that there are many paths up God's mountain, and that "everything that rises must converge," as Flannery O'Connor quoted Teilhard. But some roads don't rise, some don't lead up any mountain at all; they go into the valley or they go "round and round" in circles. And some are just dead ends! And some roads lead up one mountain, while others lead up a whole different mountain! I think it was Hans Urs von Balthasar who warned of the facile mindset that assumed everything was equally valid by saying that not only do not all roads lead up the mountain, you might find at the end of the road that you are on the wrong mountain and you are looking at your friends across a deep valley. It gets subtler and subtler, more and more refined: good becomes different from evil and then becomes different from other goods. There is always a pruning and a focusing, a purifying going on. We must beware of the pernicious peace. Sometimes we have to get off the road we're on, go backwards for a time¬¬—even on the spiritual journey—and re-find the right road.</p>
<p>The problem is, I don't think we really want peace; I think we want lack of conflict, which is not the same thing. Sometimes peace is only won at the far side of a certain kind of conflict. I'll give you an example. Last week I was giving a retreat in which I kept mentioning this idea about the evolution of consciousness and living gently on the earth as a part of our Christian spiritual practice, instead of exploiting all the goods of the earth as resources, good stewardship and ecological concerns, etc., etc. Well, a woman stood up during the Q&A period at the end of the retreat and vociferously lambasted me, "I hear what you're saying about evolution of consciousness and the Cosmic Christ and all that stuff, but I gotta tell ya', I do not want to change my lifestyle. I like my lifestyle! I like my meat [I had never mentioned a thing about vegetarianism, mind you.] and I don't want to have to eat beans all the time. I like my car and I don't want to stop driving."</p>
<p>Alright, that's fine. But then, you obviously don't want peace with the planet. This was a major theme for Pope Benedict; he entitled his New Year's address in 2009, "If you want to cultivate peace, protect creation." They go together, especially in this day and age. If we want to cultivate peace, we have to protect creation. To gain that peace is going to take some conflict. Not war with another nation, mind you (though if we don't change our ways it might come to that, over oil, over water, over food, which is what the pope was warning about), but mainly it's going to be a conflict with our own lifestyle and our Western developed-nation sense of entitlement to it. That's what it means to be "worldly." And that may be where there will be a generational split, father against son, daughter against mother, as Jesus warns, because I think young people are much more literate about and sensitive to this.</p>
<p>For another example, I am told that the majority of both Israelis and Palestinians want peace, but there are many in both regions who are not willing to do the hard sacrifice that peace will take, perhaps for the Israelis to stop building settlements in the disputed territories and allow Palestinians water rights (which the UN and the US have demanded of them); perhaps that means for the Palestinians to stop resorting to violence and to recognize the State of Israel. In order to have peace there will need to be a conflict, a conflict with our natural human tendency to build walls around our own interests. This of course is what the Prophet (Peace be upon him!) called the greater jihad anyway––the jihad al nafs, the war against the self and against self-interest. That's the sword that has to be swung, the conflict in which we must engage. I think we generally don't really want peace; we want complacency and a lack of conflict, and we want religion and spirituality to provide it. But they don't. This is what is going on in this story from the prophet Jeremiah, too: he is asking them to do something counterintuitive––to submit to the pagan king. What they don't know is that this exile is going to be their purification. We generally don't really want peace; we want complacency and a lack of conflict, and we want religion and spirituality to provide it. But they don't. At least the gospel doesn't.</p>
<p>I was thinking about all this in relationship to the breath, of all things. Did you ever notice that the breath comes in cool but leaves the body hot? It undergoes some kind of change inside of us, like water turning into fire. And so there are cool things and hot things in the spiritual life and we need them both, just as we need to breathe in and breathe out. We can't float on the lotus pad of spiritual coolness all the time! The first baptism of water is breathing in; the second baptism of fire is breathing out. Baptism is cool; Confirmation is hot. If you know anything about Eastern spirituality this will make sense: the Upanishads are cool; the Bhagavad Gita is hot. Zen is cool; Yoga is hot. Bede Griffiths was cool; Abhishiktananda was hot. These days, actually anything Eastern is cool; but the West if hot. The Buddha is cool; Saint Francis of Assisi is hot. Meister Eckhart is cool; John of the Cross is hot. Monks are cool; missionaries are hot. It's not that one is better than the other; but they go together, they have to go together like breathing in and breathing out.</p>
<p>And the Gospel? Sometimes the Gospel of Jesus is cool; but usually it's on fire, like today. This is from Fr. Lucien Deiss:</p>
<p>The Gospel is a fire which burns, a flame which purifies.<br />The Good News is a sword which cuts; it penetrates our heart<br />and makes there the bitter and sweet wounds through which life will enter.<br />And sometimes it is really necessary that God break our heart<br />to enlarge it to infinity and open it to the dimensions of his love.<br />Sometimes it is really necessary that he awaken us from our lethargy<br />so that we may get up and walk by the breath of his Spirit.</p>
<p>Let's pray that God will break our hearts and enlarge them to infinity, and open them to the dimensions of divine love. Let's pray that we would be awakened from our lethargy so that we may get up and walk by the fiery breath of the Spirit.</p>
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