On September 11th, our
nation was struck with terror. The
country was shaken. Everyone felt
vulnerable. Church attendance hit
record highs. People wanted
answers, solace, and security. They prayed.
They turned to their Bibles. They
went to church.
It is quite
natural to look to the Church for reassurance and comfort in times of trouble.
One of the most common utterances of Pope John Paul II is “Be not
afraid!” The Bible contains similar statements of consolation:
"Behold, God is my salvation; I will trust, and will not be afraid”
(Isaiah 12:2). “Because you have
made the Lord your refuge . . . no evil shall befall you . . . For he will give
his angels charge of you to guard you in all your ways” (Ps. 91:9-11).
“Behold, he who keeps Israel will neither slumber nor sleep.
The Lord is your keeper . . . The Lord will keep you from all evil; he
will keep your life” (Ps. 121:4-7).
So where was the
Lord on September 11th? Some 5000
people are dead or missing, and the threat of terror continues.
How can the Pope’s or Bible’s words possibly comfort us?
What can they mean to us? How
can we avoid living in fear?
The early Church faced similar questions during the terrors of Roman
persecution. The slaughter of
Christians grew so horrible that St. Paul (in Rm 8:36) recalls the words of the
Psalmist (Ps. 44:22): “For thy sake we are being killed all the day long; we
are regarded as sheep to be slaughtered.”
So how does St. Paul avoid living in terror?
St. Paul realizes
that we are never promised a life free of external disaster or hardship.
But he also knows that none of these external threats can separate us
from the love of Christ, and that if we have that, we need fear nothing else:
“Who shall separate us from the love of Christ?
Shall tribulation, or distress, or persecution, or famine, or nakedness,
or peril, or sword? . . . No, in all these things we are more than conquerors
through him who loved us. For I am
sure that neither death, nor life, nor angels, nor principalities, nor things
present, nor things to come, nor powers, nor height, nor depth, nor anything
else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God in Christ
Jesus our Lord.” (Rm 8:35, 37-39)
If we think about
this, we can see an important principle: there is something we ought to fear far
more than the external disasters of the kind that fill our TV screens and strike
terror into our hearts. What should
we fear? Separation from the love
of Christ! What could cause that?
Notice the things that are conspicuously absent from Paul’s list of the
evils that threaten us: he does not mention things like pride, greed,
anger, lust, envy, jealously, or hatred. Paul
never promises that sin won’t separate us from the love of Christ.
Jesus says: “Do
not fear those who kill the body but cannot kill the soul” (Mt 10:28).
Rather, he suggests we ought to “fear” God, who holds our souls in
the balance. In fact, the key to
living without fear of external disaster and hardship may lie in cultivating a
well-placed “fear” of (or respect and love for) God.
This thought is underlined in both Psalm 111:10 and Proverbs 9:10, which
identically state: “The fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom.”
How do we avoid
living in fear? By fearing God.
If we place our lives in His hands, nothing can separate us from
His love. The peace of Christ be
with you.
______________________________________________________________________________________________