Do not live in fear. But Be Dressed For
Action
The
Nineteenth Sunday of The Year: August 7, 2016 (Year C)
Inventory
What are you most concerned about in life? What
do you consider your greatest responsibility? Your main job? What motivates
you? What intimidates you?
Input
In the Entrance
Antiphon we ask God, “Be true to your covenant” — which really means, not
just to his word, but to his own nature, to what he chooses to be for us. It is
a cry for protection and security.
In the Opening
Prayer(s) we “remind” God, “Your Spirit made us your children, confident to
call you Father.” This is the way God chooses to relate to us and invites us to
relate to him: as our Father. If we are “reborn in the Spirit” we celebrate,
rejoice in, our family relationship with him.
What we ask God for as our Father is to “touch
our hearts” to make them grow toward the
fullness of life he promises, and “touch our lives” to make them signs of his love toward all people. Does that tell us something about what
we should be most concerned about in life? What our main job is? “Father” for
us means life and love. We are on earth to grow in his
love and give his love to others. Period.
In the Responsorial
Psalm (33) we rejoice precisely because of the relationship God has chosen
to have with us: “Happy the people the
Lord has chosen to be his own.”
Courage
through faith:
Wisdom
18:6-9 refers
to the Egyptians’ decree that all newborn males among the Jews should be killed
at birth. But on the night of “Passover” when the angel killed the firstborn of
the Egyptians, he “passed over” the homes the Jews had marked with the blood of
the lamb. And when the Jews passed safely through the Red Sea, their enemies
were drowned in its waters.
The Scripture scholars tell us that the intention
and real message of this and other Bible passages is never to say that God
takes vengeance by killing his enemies. In a story told by the rabbis, when the
Egyptians were drowning in the sea, the angels broke out in songs of joy and
triumph. Then they looked over and saw that God was weeping. When they asked
him why, he simply said, “The Egyptians are my children too.”
The point of the Scripture is that God loves and
protects us as a father does his children. If sometimes we cannot see this, we
simply need to believe it. God is what he is, and what he is determines what he
does. Always. No matter what we see.
Truly the eye of the
LORD is on those who fear him, on those who hope in his steadfast love, to
deliver their soul from death, and to keep them alive in famine.
Our soul waits for the
LORD; he is our help and shield. Our heart is glad in him, because we trust in
his holy name.
“Do not
live in fear”
In Luke
12:32-48 Jesus tells us very simply, “Do not live in fear.” Are there some
fearful things and people out there? Yes. Do we need to be afraid? No. Why?
Because our Father is stronger than they are, and he will not let anything harm
us if we stay close to him. Even death cannot harm us.
We don’t need to worry about the currency
recognized on this earth; we have a treasure in our own country, our homeland,
that is theft proof, recession proof, inflation proof and tax exempt! The stock
market has no effect on it at all. It simply keeps its value forever.
The only thing we have to worry about is worrying.
We have “nothing to fear but fear itself.” Fear can distract us. So can desires
for things that are not our real treasure. If we forget where our treasure
really is, we can set a false course. “Wherever your treasure lies, there your
heart will be.”
So Jesus says, “Look ahead. Keep thinking about
me. I am coming back, and when I do I will settle everything. So don’t worry;
just take care of my business and I will take care of yours.”
To strengthen us, God has given us two gifts of
the Holy Spirit: “Fortitude” and “Fear of the Lord.” The first one, also called
Courage, is to strengthen us to do
things that are hard or that we are afraid to do because of danger. This is our
defense against anyone who takes a stick to us.
And if anyone tempts us with a “carrot,” our
defense is the “braking” gift, Fear of
the Lord, which we understand best by asking ourselves what fear would be
without the emotion of fright. The answer is “perspective.” “Fear of the Lord”
is the gift of seeing everything in perspective. Then God stands out in
relation to everything else as so good, so wise, so powerful, that we recognize
it as pure insanity to go against him in any way.
This same sense of perspective makes all other
work, all other tasks and responsibilities insignificant compared to the one
work we were made for: to let Jesus Christ live in us and continue to fulfill
his mission on earth through all that we do and say. We were not just created
to “know, love and serve God,” as we were taught from infancy. We were re-created to know the Father as only
the Son knows the Father (Matthew 11:27), and to experience “the love of Christ
that surpasses knowledge, so that we may be filled with all the fullness of God”
(Ephesians 3:19). We gave our bodies to Christ at Baptism so that in us Jesus
himself might continue to serve and glorify the Father. For we were “created in
Christ Jesus for good works, which God prepared beforehand to be our way of
life” (Ephesians 2:10).
Serving God is not just one of our duties; it is
our way of life. It is all we live
for. Everything else we do, at home and at work, in our families and in the
world, we do with eyes enlightened by faith, hearts inflamed with love, and
wills empowered by the hope that “Christ will be exalted” in our bodies, by all
we say and do, “now as always, whether by life or by death” (Philippians 1:20).
Jesus said, “This is the work of God, that you
believe in him whom he has sent.” And “The one who believes in me will also do
the works that I do and, in fact, will do greater works than these (John 6:29,
14:12). Now each one of us says with Saint Paul, “It is no longer I who live,
but it is Christ who lives in me. And the life I now live in the flesh I live
by faith in the Son of God, who loved me and gave himself for me” (Galatians 2:20).
We look forward to the coming of Christ, not
with fear but with joyful hope, “waiting for the blessed hope and the
manifestation of the glory of our great God and Savior, Jesus Christ” (Titus 2:13).
This is a hope that “does not disappoint us,
because God’s love has been poured into our hearts through the Holy Spirit that
has been given to us” (Romans 5:5).
For us the “judgment” is the final revelation of
the triumph and glory of Christ. We want his victory to be made manifest in the
way we have lived our lives. “Conduct yourselves honorably among the Gentiles,
so that… they may see your honorable deeds and glorify God when he comes to
judge” (1Peter 2:12).
For us the return of Jesus and the “day of
judgment” are expectations that fill us with joy and peace: “May the God of
hope fill you with all joy and peace in believing, so that you may abound in
hope by the power of the Holy Spirit” (Romans 15:13).
Be What
You See
Our mission on earth is to make visible the
invisible. At Baptism we “offered our bodies” to God to be “priests in the
Priest” in Christ: to give physical
expression to the invisible mystery of God’s life in us, our faith, hope and
love.
Hebrews
11:1-19 tells
us, “Faith is the assurance of things hoped for, the conviction of things not
seen.” Our ministry is to live and speak in a way that “makes it clear” we are
“strangers and foreigners on the earth” who are seeking a homeland.” We “desire
a better country; that is, a heavenly one.” God our Father has “prepared a
city” for us. In our “Father’s house there are many dwelling places,” and Jesus
told us before his death, “I go to prepare a place for you” (John 14:2). Our
work is to live in a way that makes our belief in that evident. “This is the
work of God, that you believe.” And express it.
Insight
To “be Christ’ is to make visible the Good News.
Initiative:
Give God’s life:
Express to others what Jesus has expressed to
you.
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