A World on Fire

The world, it burns.

Sometimes, literally, as many near my hometown are forced to evacuate as a raging wildfire pours down the side of the mountain, a glowing cascade in the black, smoky night. Over 50,000 acres on the mountain right in my backyard. Home to so many memories of hikes and camping beneath her now torched pines and aspens.

But our world also burns without real fire.

The world is on fire in the face of a global pandemic. Fear is this fire’s fuel, and it aims to destroy foundations of consistency and rhythm in our lives. Fear consumes those without jobs, those without enough, and those who have everything they need. We panic buy items. But just a few weeks later we are saying it has all passed, when reality hasn’t changed much. But the fear burns all.

Something burns within us as we see death counts rise. We fear for our own safety and mourn for lives lost. But we also burn with indignation when we are told by laws that we must wear masks.

The world burns in the face of a loss of respect for human dignity. At the inhuman death of a man, and then another and another. The world burns with injustice. And her people riot in the streets. We seek answers, get misinformed and then are confused by the smoke of mainstream media. We want to breathe. We seek truth.

And the smoke of confusion and injustice fills our eyes and burns our lungs. We cry out and are stifled. We stay silent and suffocate.

And the world, she burns.

What water do we have against these flames? What retardants can we spray to slow the devastating spread? How can we find and put out the lingering fires hidden underneath the very floor of society that continue to simmer unnoticed until they flare up once again, raging in destruction?

You know what also burns?

His heart.

The Sacred Heart of Christ and the Immaculate heart of his mother Mary.

A cleansing fire of purification, a fire of ardent, consuming love.

As Catholics, we celebrated the solemnities of the Sacred heart and Immaculate Heart this past week. One morning at daily Mass, meditating on this feast, I began to see where to take the ending of this unfinished post and how to view the world around me right now.

When our world burns, when our hearts burn within us with fear and indignation and injustice, we have only to look at the heart of our God, and the heart of his most blessed mother to know that we are not alone. That He sees us and longs to cleanse our world. She sees us and longs to wrap the world in her flaming love.

When our world burns, their hearts burn too.

“I have come to set the earth on fire, and how I wish it were already blazing! … Do you think I have come to establish peace on the earth? No, I tell you, but rather division” Luke 12: 49, 51

In the midst of a world, sometimes literally, on fire, let us take courage in knowing that the Heart we are to be conformed to also burns. Let us be alert and attentive to the burnings within our own hearts and awaken to the callings of the Heart that burns for us.