12th Sunday in Ordinary Time
Bishop of Lake Charles
Homily for the 12th Sunday in Ordinary Time
Sunday, June 22, 2008
Cathedral of the Immaculate Conception
“Fear no one.” Matthew 10:26
An older French lady once told me of her experience of fear during World War II. Her father was a doctor in the coastal city of Le Havre. The German army was approaching the city, and on that evening her father told the family he would return to the hospital to secure the patients and evacuate them. When he returned home, at no matter what time it was, they were to leave the city immediately. She embraced her father, as though for the last time. Filled with fear she left the house too and climbed the levee that surrounded this seaport. From that vantage point, she witnessed the all night bombing. As the bombs fell and the noise and terror increased, she had only one thought. Her father would surely die. In fact, he survived, and they left the next morning on foot, fleeing the city, walking for weeks to a safe destination. She said the experience of that one night in wartime had defined fear for her for the rest of her life. I doubt that many of us have had such an experience. I certainly have not. Yet, we have all known different types of fear.
In the Gospel today Jesus says to His Apostles, “Fear no one” (Matthew 10:26). That is a sweeping statement. What could Jesus possibly mean? To put it simply, I think we encounter two types of fear in the Bible. One I would call human fear. It is the natural fear felt when confronted with a threat, as when Jeremiah speaks of the siege of Jerusalem at the time of the Exile. He writes of the invading armies, “They sound like the roaring sea as they ride forth on steeds, each in his place, for battle against you, daughter Zion. We hear the report of them; helpless fall our hands, anguish takes hold of us, throes like a mother’s in childbirth” (Jeremiah 6:23-24). This is a natural but debilitating fear. It paralyzes. It makes us stand still.
The other type of fear one encounters in the Bible is what I would call holy fear. It is a fear of God, which is more akin to reverence and awe. Isaiah expresses it well, when he writes of his vision of God. “Woe is me, I am doomed! For I am a man of unclean lips, living among a people of unclean lips; yet my eyes have seen the King, the Lord of hosts!” (Isaiah 6:5). This is a fear that makes man realize his proper place in front of God. I fear God because I am in awe of His majesty, His power, and His love. Whatever He is so far surpasses whatever I am. This fear does not paralyze. This holy fear helps me to see the truth.
Jesus clarifies what kind of fear he is talking about in the Gospel. He says to the Apostles, “Do not be afraid of those who kill the body but cannot kill the soul; rather, be afraid of the one who can destroy both soul and body in Gehenna” (Matthew 10:28). Jesus is encouraging His closest followers. They are entrusted with a special message, the good news of the Kingdom of God. They must speak the truth. Many will not want to hear it. Many will persecute them for it. However, the Church is to proclaim the message in and out of season, not matter what the cost. For this reason, they are to “fear no one.”
How timely is this message for us! Pope Benedict speaks of a secular world. It is a secular age that diminishes the meaning of the sacred. It is a world that prizes being relative. It waters down everything and no longer knows what truth is. It is an age that when it encounters obstacles to its pleasures, merely redefines what it calls truth. For a secular and relative world, power is what is important, and the ends always justify the means.
It is very easy for a Christian in this kind of world to forget fear of God and succumb to fear of man. The Christian in this environment can easily take the easy road out, ignoring the truth, maintaining that one man’s truth may not be another man’s truth, thus making relative what really matters.
When confronted by skepticism and the threats to truth, one must remember one thing. The life that is free of fear is the life that is filled with love. How does St. John express it? “Love has no room for fear; rather, perfect love casts out all fear. And since fear has to do with punishment, love is not yet perfect in one how is afraid” (I John 4:18).
There are times when human fear is natural, as in the case of our friend fleeing a city in time of war. However, in the face of the lies and deceits of this world, the Christian committed to truth should not fear. God in His truth has won a victory that overcomes the powers of this world. The Christian who knows the truth should “fear no one.”