Many ancient cultures worshiped fire as a divinity, and we can perhaps understand why.
One of the primordial elements, fire gives light, heat, security, and power; without it, the human race would have perished long ago.
While life-giving, fire is also dangerous. While it gives warmth and security, it also consumes and destroys.
Fire also has a mysterious quality. Where does it come from, what is it exactly, and when we blow out a candle, where does the flame go?
God’s presence
Throughout the Bible, fire is a physical expression of God’s presence and power.
The Lord speaks to Moses through the wonder of the burning bush. Elijah calls down fire from heaven to consume his holocaust before the priests of Baal. The angel of the Lord consumes the offering of Gideon with holy fire.
We just heard two Sundays ago that Jesus has come to set the earth on fire!
The Holy Spirit descended in tongues of flame on the Apostles gathered with Mary in the Upper Room on Pentecost.
In His appearances to St. Margaret Mary, Jesus reveals His Sacred Heart on fire with love for humanity.
In her liturgical practice, the Church generously utilizes fire.
We light and bless the Easter fire on Holy Saturday night as a symbol of the Lord’s Resurrection, and we light the Easter Candle from it, before processing into the darkened church and proclaiming the light of Christ.
At our Baptism, we received a special lit candle.
We have candles on the altar at Mass and leave vigil lights burning in religious shrines as symbols of our prayer and faith.
God’s divine fire enlightens our minds and hearts to know and understand the truth revealed to us in Christ.
Just like fire gives light in the darkness, so too the Holy Spirit illuminates us to radiate the light of the Lord to all around us, dispelling the shadows of sin, selfishness, and unbelief.
The Lord is on fire with love for us! These ardent flames of the Sacred Heart reveal the passionate love which led Jesus to embrace the Cross for our salvation.
How He loves us, and to what extremes He went to show us!
When we open our hearts to the power of God’s fire, we feel the warmth of His mercy and grace.
As Christ loves us, so He longs for us to love Him in return, without measure or calculation, to give our all as He does for us.
This fiery aspect of God’s identity and action teaches us that our Catholic faith is not simply a cerebral, intellectual, cold, and bloodless proposition.
The devotional aspect of our religious practice moves the heart and the will to love God with a holy passion and a longing desire for His life to take possession of ours.
Eucharistic Adoration, the Holy Rosary, the Stations of the Cross, litanies, devotions to the saints, and penitential actions all increase our love for the Lord, so that we can feel His love for us.
Knowing His love
Faith, of course, is not just about emotions.
Feelings are fickle, coming and going with the fluctuation of daily circumstances and interior moods. Catholicism is rooted in divine revelation, articulate doctrine, thoughtful theology, and intellectual tradition.
We cannot simply give a mental assent to belief and leave it there, as if that is enough.
Love takes us further and deeper than reason can go, and so, only in the surrender of our will and the transformation of our heart, can we come to grasp the height, depth, and breadth of the Lord’s love for us, and respond to His initiative with love of our own.
In his spiritual classic, The Imitation of Christ, Thomas à Kempis says this: “Love feels no burden, thinks nothing of trouble, attempts what is above its strength, pleads no excuse of impossibility, for it thinks all things possible . . . Though weary, love is not tired; though pressed, it is not straitened, though alarmed, it is not confounded: but as a lively flame and burning torch, it forces its way upwards and securely passes through all.”
When I think of God’s fire, I want to draw just close enough to feel His warmth and consolation, but I hear the Holy Spirit telling me to jump into His fire, so that the Lord can burn away all of my sin, fear, selfishness, and sadness.
Just as the fire which Moses saw at Mount Horeb did no harm to the bush, so too God’s fire will not harm us at all, for it is the purifying force of His love which takes away all that is not of Him.
We pray the Lord feeds the fire burning in our souls, so that the flame of our love will leap up to light the world!