"Put on then, as God's chosen ones, holy and beloved, heartfelt compassion, kindness, humility, gentleness, and patience," (Col 3:12)
Twelfth Sunday in Ordinary Time
In today's liturgy of the Word, we can meditate on fear, which is the result of persecution, suffering, rejection. The prophet Jeremiah describes the attitude of his persecutors who, without shame, speak openly of their desire to persecute and kill him. In the Gospel, Jesus also speaks of persecution and possible death that can befall believers at unknown times and under unexpected conditions. Faced with this fear, man takes various attitudes: withdrawal, distrust, false humility, doubt. None of us like to be scared unless we're the fan of horror movies. Do you like to watch horror movies? Life, however, provides us with many difficult and strange situations that are much worse than horror movies full of ghosts or monsters. It is one thing to experience fear while looking at the TV screen, and quite another to meet this fear in real life, where it affects me, paralyzes my heart, occupies my mind, driving me into a trap of negative emotions, uncontrollable behaviors, bad decisions like sin for example. And that such situations happen in our lives, we know perfectly well, because it is not possible to smile all the time (unless you work in McDonald’s), to be constantly satisfied, happy, without any problems and sufferings. There are and will come situations that will shake our lives, which we will not fully predict, and which, unfortunately, we will have to agree to and accept them. We all want happiness and strive for it very much. But once it arrives, we begin to look anxiously around the bill we will have to pay for it. Our happiness will give us an account of our suffering, as the life of our Lord Jesus Christ is a perfect example. He brought us happiness, shared with us God's life and God's love, but for all this he paid the highest possible price, which was giving his life on the cross. He sacrificed himself so that we could become happy, eternally happy. Therefore, even in something as beautiful and noble as happiness, love, joy, there will be a crack, a scarf caused by our fear, our weakness, our suffering. Is it possible to believe without fear, to live without suffering? Jesus shows us with his life that it is impossible to get rid of fear, to completely remove suffering from our lives. Even Jesus, facing his Passion and Death, praying in the Olive Garden, began to feel fear, he began to be afraid of what was about to happen, because it was not something easy and pleasant. His Passion was not a simple walk, but the greatest battle between good and evil in the history of the world, in which He Himself took the impact of the fight, of all this evil on his shoulders. Imagine that our country is invaded by enemy armies, and only one soldier stands up to defend us. Wouldn't you be afraid in such a situation? What about that soldier? This was the case on Golgotha two thousand years ago. But Jesus said the words: Father, thy will be done. And the will of the Father was to save the world, and it was done because, despite the fear, God turned out to be greater than all that fear. Do you believe today that God is greater than your fear? Do you believe His grace is greater than your weakness? Do you believe that Jesus saved you on the cross so you wouldn't have to go to hell? If you believe this, you will overcome every fear that will appear in your heart, every failure that will happen to you, and many more weaknesses and failures will happen in your life. Never be afraid of failures, because they can be the key to your success. Don't shy away from taking risks for fear of making a mistake. Jesus is not telling you to be perfect in faith and not to make mistakes, but not to focus too much on those mistakes, which weakens your faith in yourself and limits His action in your life. Jesus does not tell you never to be afraid of anything, because you know that it is impossible, but to come to Him with this fear and give Him trust. Life is not about avoiding fear, but about overcoming it with the power of God's grace within you. God doesn't come to you in Holy Communion, he doesn't forgive you your sins, he doesn't support you with his presence to make you curl your tail like a dog and groan in fear of this world, but to tell this world and other people with faith and trust the truth which you yourself received from God and in which you yourself live. And even if that testimony costs you your life, it is better to die proudly for Christ and win eternal life than to try to save this miserable earthly life at the cost of breaking your relationship with Christ. It is the loss of God that we should fear the most in this life, because if we lose Him, we will lose the only helping hand that wanted to pull us out of the swamp of this world, from the abyss of sin and hopelessness. Let's not be afraid of our earthly everyday fears, but let's treat them as a motivation to fight better for goodness, love, for eternity.
Father Marcin Cwierz, OSPPE
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"Put on then, as God's chosen ones, holy and beloved, heartfelt compassion, kindness, humility, gentleness, and patience," (Col 3:12)