“Every one therefore that shall confess me before men, I will also confess him before my Father who is in heaven. But he that shall deny me before men, I will also deny him before my Father who is in heaven. Do not think that I came to send peace upon earth: I came not to send peace, but the sword. For I came 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 enemies shall be they of his own household.
With fear abated, the Lord then proceeds to give comfort to His Apostles, that to confess Jesus is to be welcomed into the bosom of the Father by the same Jesus. The witness of your love is the story that will be told to the Father at the end of days, with a reward far beyond what your little confession warrants awaiting you. Consider, Theophila, a parent giving extraordinary gifts to a little child simply because they are theirs; the child’s work is meager yet loving, earnest if small, and the parent lavishes love upon the child for the sake of love. So too will the Father lavish what is beyond comprehension upon you for your earnest love: “Eye hath not seen, nor ear heard, neither hath it entered into the heart of man, what things God hath prepared for them that love him” (1 Corinthians 2:9). Now, this confession is threefold: First is the love and faith of heart and mind: “Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with thy whole heart, and with thy whole soul, and with thy whole strength” (Deuteronomy 6:5); “For we account a man to be justified by faith, without the works of the law” (Romans 3:28), second is the confession of the mouth: “I will bless the Lord at all times, his praise shall be always in my mouth” (Psalm 33:2); “Every tongue should confess that the Lord Jesus Christ is in the glory of God the Father” (Philippians 2:11), third is the life of love, that the name of Jesus which is upon you may not be a source of scandal due to a loveless life: “My little children, let us not love in word, nor in tongue, but in deed, and in truth” (1 John 3:18); “For even as the body without the spirit is dead; so also faith without works is dead” (James 2:26). To deny Jesus in any of these is to withdraw from love, but to do these things opens you to being given a greater measure of love: “And God is able to make all grace abound in you; that ye always, having all sufficiency in all things, may abound to every good work” (2 Corinthians 9:8). As for the sword, this is the word of God: “And from his mouth came out a sharp two edged sword” (Apocalypse 1:16); And take unto you… the sword of the Spirit (which is the word of God)” (Ephesians 6:17), which is intended to bring peace: “Glory to God in the highest; and on earth peace to men of good will” (Luke 2:14), for it, like a surgeon’s knife, cuts away what is contrary to love: “The flowers have appeared in our land, the time of pruning is come” (Canticle 2:12), and cauterizes the wound with the fire of love: “And the fire of the Lord being kindled against them, devoured them that were at the uttermost part of the camp” (Numbers 11:1). This surgery and cautery is unpleasant to the sensations: “Now all chastisement for the present indeed seemeth not to bring with it joy, but sorrow: but afterwards it will yield, to them that are exercised by it, the most peacable fruit of justice” (Hebrews 12:11), the voice of the good spirit to the one still writhing in sin is a prick to the conscience: “Now when they had heard these things, they had compunction in their heart” (Acts 2:37); “Blessed is the man that hath not slipped by a word of his mouth, and is not pricked with the remorse of sin” (Ecclesiasticus 14:1), and many, like children, will be unable to relinquish the goods of children for the greater goods of adulthood: “Forsake childishness, and live, and walk by the ways of prudence” (Proverbs 9:6); “I gave you milk to drink, not meat; for you were not able as yet. But neither indeed are you now able; for you are yet carnal” (1 Corinthians 3:2). Now, the ways of children are complaining: “Do ye all things without murmurings and hesitations” (Philippians 2:14), pleasure: “It is the spirit that quickeneth: the flesh profiteth nothing” (John 6:64), worldly honor: “And when I turned myself to all the works which my hands had wrought, and to the labours wherein I had laboured in vain, I saw in all things vanity, and vexation of mind, and that nothing was lasting under the sun” (Ecclesiastes 2:11), error: “For the wisdom of this world is foolishness with God” (1 Corinthians 3:19), and vanity: “Favour is deceitful, and beauty is vain: the woman that feareth the Lord, she shall be praised” (Proverbs 31:30). So attached are some to these that they will turn against the members of their own household before relinquishing them, like a toddler screaming at having a toy taken away, and this is to be a child in the ways of love: “When I was a child, I spoke as a child, I understood as a child, I thought as a child. But, when I became a man, I put away the things of a child” (1 Corinthians 13:11). Therefore, due to the fundamental differences with which parties that differ in belief see reality, it sparks warfare, for you fight for the beauty of True Love, being a soldier of Love: “Labour as a good soldier of Christ Jesus” (2 Timothy 2:3), where others, not knowing the unfathomable love and wonder of God, do not climb to this same love and goodness: “They have not known nor understood: they walk on in darkness” (Psalm 81:5). Finally, there is a mystical sense in which this war can be interpreted, for you have renounced the devil for the love of Jesus, thereby putting aside the father of lies which once captivated you: “You are of your father the devil, and the desires of your father you will do. He was a murderer from the beginning, and he stood not in the truth; because truth is not in him. When he speaketh a lie, he speaketh of his own, for he is a liar, and the father thereof” (John 8:44) for the love of truth: “Sanctify them in truth. Thy word is truth” (John 17:17). You have set yourself against your mother the world, for she raised you in her ways and you are now called to leave her house for the sake of the love of Divine Wisdom: “Wherefore a man shall leave father and mother, and shall cleave to his wife: and they shall be two in one flesh” (Genesis 2:24); “He that possesseth justice, shall lay hold on her, and she will meet him as an honourable mother, and will receive him as a wife married of a virgin” (Ecclesiasticus 15:1-2). Finally, in welcoming the spirit of love, you separate yourself from the law of fear that was of the Old Covenant understanding, for “Fear is not in love” (1 John 4:18), instead running to the perfect love of the Trinity to immerse yourself in the divine life: “Thou art my beloved Son; in thee I am well pleased” (Luke 3:22).