SUNDAY 12 (A)
Mt 10,26-33
The “do not be afraid” is framed in the context of mission. Jesus has just told his followers that they will be persecuted, even killed. The warning to overcome fear is applicable to all situations we may encounter in our lives.
There is an instinctive fear that is a product of evolution, essential for maintaining biological life, whether by fleeing or by releasing energy to confront real threats. Man can fall prey to rationally learned fear, which betrays us and leads us to constant follies because it paralyzes and grips us.
We long for what we do not have and fear arises of not achieving it. We are not sure we can keep what we have and the dread of losing it emerges. Rational fear is the consequence of our attachments. We have not discovered what we truly are and we seek security elsewhere. Once our true being is known, there is no place for fear.
Jesus does not invite us to be unafraid because he promises us a path of roses. It is not about trusting that nothing unpleasant will happen to me, or that if something bad occurs, someone will pull me out of trouble. It is about a security that remains intact in the midst of difficulties, because it cannot annul what we truly are.
Accepting our limitations and discovering our true wealth is the only path to complete trust. Trust is the first consequence of going out of ourselves and discovering that my foundation is not in me, but in Him. My past is God, my future is the same God; my present is God, I have nothing to fear.
Trust in God obliges us to emerge from false images of God. To trust in God is to trust in our own being, in life, in what we truly are. It is about discovering that God is the foundation of my being and that I can be as sure of myself as God is sure of himself. Creation is as it should be, if I know how to perceive it.
Fear is the best way to subjugate another. All authorities have always used it to achieve the submission of their subjects. Even religions have attempted to manipulate the divinity to put it at the service of selfish interests.
In our religion, fear has had and continues to have a harmful influence. The hierarchy has fallen into the trap of promoting that fear. They have attributed to God the same strategy we use to domesticate animals: carrot or stick.
The cause of God is the cause of man. Let us not deceive ourselves: to take the side of Jesus is to take the side of man. God is not from outside capriciously manipulating creation. He is implicated in it inextricably. His will is immutable. It is not something added to creation, but creation itself that is founded in Him.
This security has nothing to do with what I individually am. Trust is not a gift for the good, but a necessity for those of us who are not. When we trust because we believe ourselves to be good, we enter into a most dangerous dynamic, because we do not trust in God, but in ourselves and in our works.
All fears are summed up in the fear of death. If we were capable of losing the fear of dying, we would be capable of living in fullness. Everything we feared losing with death is what we should have learned to abandon during life.
Death only takes from us what is contingent, individual, earthly, perishable, and selfish within us. The Gospel is very clear today. Everything they can take from you, even life itself, should not matter to you because it is not essential.
Fray Marcos