I Built a Fire

I’m not sure if other priests have done this here, but I built a fire in the fireplace this week. My sister’s always got a fire going in her house when I visit. A few weeks back I resolved to make one myself. So I called a chimney sweep to give me the all-clear, then asked Tony Biancardi for some firewood to kicks things off — and what a lovely thing. I poured myself a drink, sat back with a book, and enjoyed one of life’s most ancient pleasures. Actually, before I sat down I made Therese come look at the fire (she was working late in the office). She was so proud of me. Ironically, the book I was reading was about Neanderthals.

The act of building a fire, if not man’s first invention, remains his first discovery — the discovery of his innate ability to control the elements of the natural world, to exhibit mastery over it, to “have dominion,” as the Scriptures say. Man and fire were together at the beginning of the human experience. Controlled flame enabled him to cook, to work at night, to live in colder climates, and to gather his woman and children around its warmth while regaling them with stories of the day’s hunt. That hearth of the home became the heart of the family, the center of the domestic life. Not man alone. Nor fire alone. But man and fire - and everything from that.

Sitting by the fireplace this week, I touched the beginning of man’s history, but also something of my own humanity. With primal simplicity, its flames reminded me that I, too, am being created, held in existence. As mysteriously as it burned, it humbled me — but in humbling me, lifted my spirits and raised me from sadness. By its purity, it awakened in me the desire for simple things: a drink, a book, a story, and a woman to show. By its poverty, the fire made me rich.

By poverty, in this sense, I mean purity — the purity of being as God created a thing to be. Not all fire is pure any more than all men are pure. The flames that burst the windows of the World Trade Center were from the hell that burned in the hearts of the hijackers. But pure fire, because of its poverty, enriches man by reminding him of his first desire, which was for God before it was bent toward evil. It is this original desire that compels the heart of Jesus of Nazareth to concern for us.

To those who can hear it, He says, ”Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven,” and, “Blessed are the pure of heart, for they shall see God.” His words burn away the excesses of our lives. In order to heal the kind of poverty that evil men impose on their neighbors by depriving them of justice, or the false purity promised by policies of isolation, the poverty and purity taught to us by Christ are together in the kingdom of heaven — as he would have all of us — as they were in the beginning, are now, and ever shall be. Like a refiner’s fire Christ’s Sermon on the Mount has the power to disenthrall our hearts from worldly attachments as a warm fire makes a man unafraid of his troubles. +