Memorial of Saint Bonaventure, Bishop and Doctor of the Church
I have not come to bring peace, but the sword. - Matthew 10:34
Today we hear another one of those “difficult sayings” of Jesus. Jesus, rebuker of Peter for drawing his sword. Jesus, admonisher of those who live by the sword. Jesus, whose nativity inspired heavenly hosts over Bethlehem to sing of “peace on earth.”
So what’s up with that? If we struggle with this image we are in good company. So have saints and scholars for centuries. So do preachers and teachers and people-in-the-pew in 2024. It just seems so extraordinarily out of character.
We hear today that he comes to bring division. But isn’t division a demonic thing that is not of God? Aren’t millions of Americans in 2024 filled with angst over the great divide and the threats and lies and strife that it brings to our national discourse? Shouldn’t peace and not the sword be the very essence of who we are as his disciples? As Catholic Christians it is vital that when we hear or read the scriptures, that we try our best to place them in the context of their original time and place — what they would have meant to the original writers and the original audiences. That is the Catholic approach of responsible Bible study.
We must ask what was happening to the Followers of the Way at the time Matthew wrote – the year 80 (the word “Christian” didn’t exist yet). The year 70 began the great Jewish diaspora as Titus destroyed Jerusalem. Many Jewish sects, including the Jesus Jews, fled from Jerusalem
first to Syria and then to Lebanon, when the separation of the Followers of the Way with other sects of Jews started to occur. This was the scene wherein Matthew’s Gospel was composed. There is no war like a civil war. Followers of the Way/Jesus Jews were now rejected by kin and community and thrown out of the synagogues. Worse than this, some informed the civil authorities that the Jesus groups were false Jews and not exempt from the emperor cult. Jews were exempt early on from emperor worship, a cult celebrated for gluing the vast empire together. (The Romans figured Jews were a lost cause with their unbending and strange belief in a single God.)
In the midst of this struggle, the author of Matthew quotes Jesus that he had come to bring the sword. It has never been easy or smooth to follow him. It is a life often filled with challenges, troubles and strife. He never promised us otherwise.
—Timothy J. Cronin