In the 1986
horror movie, The Fly, there is the line, “Be afraid. Be very afraid.” This phrase has since entered the common
parlance, since it captures a very real emotion. “Be afraid.
Be very afraid.”
There is much
to arouse fear in us. There is a
plethora a reasons to keep you awake at night.
Rogue nations with nuclear weapons.
Terrorists with biological weapons.
Hackers stealing your passwords and all your money. Irrevocable degradation of the environment
and natural disasters. Cancer. Politics.
And more.
So the phrase
“Be afraid. Be very afraid” can ring all
too true.
Our Gospel
today takes a totally different approach.
In the Gospel we just heard Jesus tells us: “Fear no one.” A little later He says: “Do not be afraid of those who kill the body
but cannot kill the soul.” And still
later, “So do not be afraid.”
Do not be
afraid. OK. How do you do that?? By a shear act of will? I can’t do that. Can you?
I don’t think so.
However, we
read in the First Letter of St. John, chapter 4, verse 18: “There is no fear in love, but perfect love drives
out fear ....”
Perfect love
drives out fear. If we could love
perfectly, we could drive out all fear from our hearts. But that is a pretty tall order. Fortunately, the love with witch Jesus loves
us is perfect. It is total and
complete. And so it drives out
fear. This is why St. John in the very
next verse states: “We love
because he first loved us.”
Brothers and
sisters, the more we can open ourselves to the love Jesus has for each of us,
the more we can love in return, and then we will be so strong, so powerful,
that we can let go of fear. We are, each
of us, God’s beloved children. So do not
be afraid.
AMEN.
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