Gospel (Lk 12,49-53) - At that time, Jesus said to his disciples: «I have come to throw fire on the earth, and how I wish it were already lit! I have a baptism in which I will be baptized, and how I am anxious until it is completed! Do you think I have come to bring peace to the earth? No, I tell you, but division. From now on, if there are five people in a family, they will be divided three against two and two against three; they will divide father against son and son against father, mother against daughter and daughter against mother, mother-in-law against daughter-in-law and daughter-in-law against mother-in-law."

The commentary on the Gospel by Monsignor Vincenzo Paglia

Jesus uses the image of the fire that he himself came to bring to the earth: "I have come to throw fire on the earth, and how I wish it were already lit!". The Apocalypse will take up this image in relation to the angel who throws fire on the earth at the end of time (8.5). Jesus wants the disciples to abandon every attitude of laziness, delay, coldness, closure, to welcome the same restlessness as him. The disciple is not called to a stingy and quiet life. He immerses himself in the Gospel - he is as if baptized (precisely, "immersed") in the Gospel - driven by the urgency of communicating it to all men and women so that they may be saved from loneliness and death. Only the Gospel is the fire that saves, that changes the world, starting from the change of each person's heart. Paul will say: "For he is our peace" (Eph 2:14) and the Lord himself said: "Blessed are the peacemakers". There is no contradiction in this case between peace and the sword. The peace that Jesus brings is not like that which the world gives (Jn 14.27), it is not stingy tranquility or security of one's own traditions. In order to enjoy the peace that comes from the Gospel, a purification through fire is necessary, a separation between evil and good, a discernment between the light that Jesus comes to bring into the world and the darkness of evil. Peace is a gift and an achievement, it is acceptance of the Gospel and abandonment of egocentrism.