SWORD AND FIRE
Every time that the flatterers of the powerful have
desired to sanctify the ambition of the ambitious, the violence of the violent,
the fierceness of the fierce, the aggression of the pugnacious, the conquests of the conquerors, every time that
the paid scholars or frenzied orators have tried to reconcile pagan ferocity
with Christian gentleness, to use the Cross as the heigth of the sword, to
justify blood spilt through hatred by the blood which flowed on Calvary to
teach love; every time, in short, that people wish to use the doctrine of peace
to legitimatize war, and make Christ collateral for Genghis Khan or for Bonaparte
or even through refinement of shame, the outrider of Mahomet, you will see them
quote, with the inexorable punctuality of all commonplaces, the celebrated
gospel text, which everybody knows by heart and very few have ever understood.
"Think not that I am come to send peace on earth: I
came not to send peace, but a sword."
(Matt. 10:34) Some more learned add,
"I am come to send fire on the earth." Others rush forward to
present the decisive verse, "The
kingdom of heaven suffers violence, and the violent take it by force."
(Matt. 11:12)
What angel of eloquence, what supernatural enlightener,
can ever reveal to these hardened appraisers the true meaning of the words
which they repeat with such light frivolity? They do not look at the words
which come before and after; they pay no attention to the occasion on which
they were spoken. They do not imagine for a moment that they can have another
meaning from the common one.
When Jesus says that He has come to bring
a sword,—or as it is written in the parallel passage of Luke, "Discord," He is speaking to
His Disciples who are on the point of departing to announce the coming of the
Kingdom. And immediately after having spoken of the sword, He explains with
familiar examples what He meant to say: "For
I am come to set a man at variance against his father, and the daughter against
her mother, and the daughter-in-law against her mother-in-law. And a man's foes
shall be they of his own household. For from henceforth there shall be five in
one house divided, three against two, and two against three." The
sword therefore does not mean war; it is a figure of speech which signifies division. The sword is what divides, cuts in two, disunites; and the
preaching of the gospel shall divide men of the same family. Because among men
there are those deaf and those who hear, those who are slow and those who are
quick, those who deny and those who believe. Until all are converted and "brothers in the Word,"
discord will reign on earth. But discord is not war, is not massacre. Those who
have heard and believe—the Christians—will not assault those who do not hear
and do not believe. They will, it is true, take up arms against their tenacious
and stubborn brothers, but these arms will be preaching, example, pardon, love.
Those who are not converted perhaps will begin real warfare, the warfare of violence
and blood, but they will begin it exactly because they are not converted,
precisely because they are not yet Christians. The triumph of the Gospel is the
end of all wars, of wars between man and man, between family and family,
between caste and caste, between people and people. If the Gospel at first is
the cause of separations and discord the fault is not in the truths taught in
the Gospel but in the fact that these truths are not yet practiced by all.
When Jesus proclaims that he comes to bring fire, only a
literal-minded barbarian can think of murderous and destructive fire, worthy
auxiliary of human warfare. "What
will
I if it be already kindled!" (Luke 12:49) The fire desired by the Son of Man is the
fire of purification, of enthusiasm, the ardor of sacrifice, the shining flame
of love. Until all souls are burning and consumed in that fire, the word of the
Gospel will be but useless sound, and the Kingdom still far away. To renew the
contaminated and hateful family of men, a wonderful outburst of grief and of
passion is needed. The complacent must suffer, the cold must burn, and the
insensible must cry out, the tepid must flame like torches in the night. All the
filth accumulated in the secret life of men, all the sediments of sin which
make of every soul an offensive sewer, all the corruption which shuts the ears
and suffocates the hearts, must be burned up in this miraculous spiritual fire,
which Jesus came to kindle in our hearts.
But to pass beyond this wall of flame there is need for
strength of soul and a boldness not possessed by all, possessed only by the heroic;
and thus Jesus can say, "The Kingdom
of Heaven suffers violence and the violent take it by force." The word
violent has as a matter of fact in the text the evident meaning of "strong,"
of men who know how to take doors by assault without hesitating or trembling. "Sword," "fire,"
"violence," are words which are not to be taken in the literal
sense, so pleasing to the advocates of massacres. They are figurative words
which we are forced to use to reach the torpid imagination of the crowds. The
sword is the symbol of the divisions between those first persuaded and those
who are last in believing; fire is purifying love; violence is the strength
necessary to make oneself over and to arrive on the threshold of the Kingdom. Anyone
who understands this passage in any other way either does not know how to read,
or is determined to misread.
Jesus is the man of Peace. He has come to bring Peace.
The Gospels are nothing but proclamations and instructions for Peace. The very
night of His birth celestial voices sang in the sky the prophetic augury:
"Peace on Earth to men of good will." On the Mount one of the first
promises which flowed from the heart and from the lips of Christ is that
directed to the peacemakers, "Blessed are the peacemakers: for they shall
be called the children of God." When the apostles are ready to depart on
their mission He commands them to wish peace to all the houses where they
enter. To the disciples, to His friends, He counsels, "Have peace one
with another." Drawing near to Jerusalem, He looks at it pityingly and
exclaims, "If thou hadst known, even thou, at least in this thy day, the
things which belong unto thy peace!" and the terrible night on the Mount
of Olives, while the mercenaries armed with swords are binding Him, He
pronounces the supreme condemnation of violence, "For all they that take
the sword shall perish with the sword." He understands the evils of
discord, "Every kingdom divided against itself is brought to desolation;
and every city or house divided against itself shall not stand." And in
His talk on the last things, in the grand apocalyptic prophecy, He announces among
the terrible signs of the end together with famine, earthquakes and tribulation,
also wars. "And ye shall hear of wars and rumors of wars. . . . For nation
shall rise against nation, and kingdom against kingdom."
For Jesus discord is an evil; war is a crime. His God is
not the old Lord of Battles. The apologists for great massacres confuse the Old
and the New Testament. But the New is new exactly because it transforms the
Old.
Only when considered as a punishment can war be thought
of as divine. War is the terrible retribution of men who have recourse to war;
it is the cruelest manifestation of the hatred which broods and boils in human
hearts, the hatred which drives men to take up arms to destroy one another. War
is at the same time a crime and its own punishment.
But when hate is abolished in every heart,
war will be incomprehensible: our most terrible punishment will disappear
together with our greatest sin. Then at last will arrive the day longed for by
Isaiah when, "they shall beat their
swords into plow-shares, and their spears into pruning hooks: nation shall not
lift up sword against nation, neither shall they learn war anymore."
(Isa. 2:4; Micah 4:3)
That day announced by Isaiah is the day on which the Sermon
on the Mount shall become the only law recognized on earth.
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