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Gospel Commentary for Thusrday, October 23, 2025
Not Peace, but a Sword
Isn’t Jesus Christ the Prince of Peace? Didn’t He come into the world to reconcile us with God and with one another—to bring forgiveness and renew our relationships through the commandment of love? How, then, can we understand today’s Gospel, with its harsh and seemingly contradictory words?
In truth, there is no contradiction here, but rather a profound logic. Jesus places us before a decisive choice: to choose Him as Lord and Messiah, and to make Him—and following Him—the true center of our existence. It is a radical decision because it allows for no half measures: if we don’t choose Him, we are rejecting Him. This is a choice of faith, but one that shows itself in every essential aspect of our lives—our relationships with others, our awareness and readiness, our sense of responsibility, and our willingness to serve. All of these flow from listening to and welcoming the Word made flesh, who is Jesus Himself.
The decision is radical because, in the end, it comes down to one thing: the willingness to give one’s life. That is exactly what Jesus is doing—a life dedicated to His Father and to the good of His brothers and sisters, culminating in a “baptism” that cannot help but bring tension and anguish: His death on the Cross, the purifying fire of total love that conquers sin and even death itself.
Jesus is not a “soft” teacher who came to sweeten life’s hardships with easy comfort. When we sugarcoat His image, we falsify both Him and His message. Jesus, the Master and Messiah, is a man of firm decisions—decisions that involve difficult renunciations. By choosing the way of the Cross and not turning away from the harshest and darkest aspects of human life—the consequences of sin and distance from God—Jesus accepts the cost of rejecting false paths to salvation, those that are constantly proposed to us: the pursuit of pleasure as life’s only good, and with it, wealth, selfishness, exclusion of others, and, when convenient, violence as a means of defense and self-assertion.
Just as there is a soft (and false) image of Jesus and of Christianity that tries to avoid all conflict through an impossible kind of “peace at any price,” there is also a soft pacifism—what philosopher Emmanuel Mounier called the pacifism of the weak. Behind the slogans “No to war,” “I don’t want to kill,” and “Peace at any price,” one often hears the trembling voice that says, “I just don’t want to die,” or “My life, whatever it takes.” In this sense, peace means little more than “leave me alone”—a refusal to give one’s life for anything.
If Jesus is the Prince of Peace, He is so in another way—embodying what Mounier called the calm strength of dying without killing, the pacifism of the strong. The readiness to give one’s life for truth and goodness requires courage and the ability to make difficult choices, even when they bring conflict and risk to one’s comfort and peace of mind. It is of such conflicts that Christ speaks today, when He refers to the division and the sword He brings to the earth.
The choice of faith—the decision to follow Him to the end—often means going against the current, drawing hostility from those around us, for such decisions are, by their nature, a silent but powerful challenge to the world.
It is no wonder, then, that Jesus speaks of fire, of a sword, and of division. He is calling us to the highest kind of freedom: the freedom to make that decision of faith, even when it means breaking with the environment around us and facing opposition—even from those dearest to us. But that decision is not against them—it is for them. For by choosing Jesus above all else, we break with sin, purify our capacity to love, and bear the fruits of holiness that lead to eternal life.
Fraternal greetings,