Jesus, at times, makes us sit back and wonder, “What did he just say?” Today, in Luke’s Gospel, the Lord says, “I have come to cast a fire upon the earth; how I wish it were already kindled.” Hmmm, I thought the angels on Christmas morning said that he had come as the Prince of Peace? Jesus is the Incarnation of the God who is nothing but love, but this enfleshment, as Bishop Robert Barron notes, takes place in the midst of a fallen, sinful world. Christ was a sign of contradiction. Our Lord is forewarning his disciples about the contention and division which will accompany the spread of the Gospel. As His disciples, to live a life as Christ taught is to be branded as radical in the eyes of a world obsessed with the material self. Our Baptism is a submersion in Christ’s death, in which we die to sin and are reborn to the new life of grace. Through this new life, we Christians should become set on fire in the same way as Jesus set his disciples on fire. Fr. Ron Rolheiser writes that Christianity is the only religion that worships the scapegoat, the one who is hated, excluded, spat upon, blamed for everything, ridiculed, shamed, and made expendable. Christianity is the only religion that focuses on imitating the victim and sees God in the one who is surrounded by the halo of hatred. We must be “set on fire” in the same way Jesus set his disciples on fire, with hearts ablaze in love of the marginalized, the sick, the poor, the handicapped, the unborn, the unattractive, the non-productive, and the aged. This is the cross we must lovingly bear in suffering with Christ through the grace of God.