Shall We Call Down Fire Upon Them?

Today’s Gospel passage at Holy Mass is a bit odd. But our Lord is teaching something profoundly important. It reads thus:

When the days for Jesus to be taken up were fulfilled,
he resolutely determined to journey to Jerusalem,
and he sent messengers ahead of him.
On the way they entered a Samaritan village
to prepare for his reception there,
but they would not welcome him
because the destination of his journey was Jerusalem.
When the disciples James and John saw this they asked,
"Lord, do you want us to call down fire from heaven
to consume them?"
Jesus turned and rebuked them,
and they journeyed to another village. - Luke 9:51-56

The time was nearing when Jesus was to suffer His Passion, die, rise, and ascend into Heaven. He determined to go to Jerusalem. But He sent them ahead to a Samaritan village. Of course, Jesus knew that He would not be welcomed in this town. The Samaritans had nothing to do with the Jews. They would have nothing to do with Jesus, especially as He was bound for Jerusalem!

But there is something else going on here. Jesus seems to be reaching His apostles. James and John saw that the Samaritans did not want to receive Jesus and asked Jesus if they ought to call down fire from Heaven to consume the Samaritans!

Jesus turned and rebuked them! And they went to another village. What was He teaching them?

In the Catena Aurea, St. Cyril of Alexandria is reported as saying this:

“For they [the disciples] were to be the teachers of the world, going through towns and villages, to preach the doctrine of the Gospel, meeting sometimes with men who would not receive the sacred doctrine, allowing not that Jesus sojourned on earth with them. He therefore taught them, that in announcing the divine doctrine, they ought to be filled with patience and meekness, without bitterness, and wrath, and fierce enmity against those who had done any wrong to them.”

This immediately brought my mind to the antithetical approach of Islam. In his famous (some would say “infamous”) Regensburg Address, Pope Benedict XVI lays out the reality of the violence-filled like of Mohammed and the broader subject of jihad.

The early surah 2:256 reads thusly: “There is no compulsion in religion.” As the Pope points out, scholars generally agree that this was written when Mohammed was just starting out and was still relatively powerless and threatened. Later, in the “sword verses,” there is a clear call to convert by the sword! The Qu’ran is progressive, in that those passages which come later can sometimes replace early passages (note: the Bible is NOT this way - we see the Scriptures as a canonical whole).

Though Pope Benedict notes (in a footnote) that he does not personally hold to a quote he uses from Byzantine Emperor Manuel II Paleologus (15th Century), he nonetheless quotes it:

“Show me just what Mohammed brought that was new, and there you will find things only evil and inhuman, such as his command to spread by the sword the faith he preached.”

The “sword verses”, following the progressive logic of the Qu’ran, should be abrogated, canceled, and replaced by the later verses calling for tolerance, compassion, and peace. Many mainstream Muslim thinkers today hold this position rigorously.

However, the life of Mohammed himself is clear. In Mecca, with adherents of Islam, it is a religion of peace. However, Mohammed undertook at least 19 military expeditions, personally fighting in eight of them (USIP). He executed men and sold women and children into slavery. He called his scimitar “the Destroyer.” And he had no qualms with slaughtering whole groups of people who would not convert to Islam or, at least, pay him a religious tax.

Now, let us return to the Lord. Jesus Christ, Lord of Heaven and Earth, could have called down fire from heaven to consume the Samaritans and anyone else that He desired. His disciples knew this. They knew about Elijah calling down fire on the prophets of Ba’al. And, yet, Jesus rebukes them for the suggestion. He provides the lasting model for evangelization.

In the words of St. John Paul II: “The faith is proposed, not imposed.”