A clear theme running through this week’s readings is fear. But we need to make a distinction between good and bad fear. There is a holy fear: indeed, precisely one of the gifts of the Holy Spirit is fear of the Lord. This is a holy reverence towards God (confidence in God as a loving Father should not be confused with disrespect towards him). This fear can also be a sensible fear of hell, as the ultimate danger we rightly want to avoid. And finally, it can be an expression of affection: the tender fear of offending he whom we love.
But there can also be bad fear. This happens when we lose our trust in God, as Adam and Eve hid from the Lord after they had eaten from the forbidden tree. Fear can result from a wrong understanding of God, seeing him erroneously as a strict judge or tyrant and failing to appreciate he is a loving, merciful father. Finally, there can be a fear when one knows one is behaving badly and is afraid of being caught, like a criminal fleeing the police.
The devil constantly provokes these latter types of fear, leading us to fear God and lose our trust in him. This leads to panic, which in turn leads to bad actions and decisions. We see this in today’s readings when the opponents of Jeremiah falsely accuse him of promoting terror among the Jews of his time, when Jerusalem was being besieged by the Babylonians: “For I hear many whispering. ‘Terror is on every side! Denounce him! Let us denounce him!’” This was an exaggerated distortion of Jeremiah’s message, when in reality his call to surrender to the Babylonians was the right course of action and would have avoided much bloodshed and the city’s destruction – which actually happened because they disregarded Jeremiah’s words.
The psalmist, however, encourages confidence in the Lord. He is able to suffer taunts, shame and rejection because he trusts in God. What would cause fear to others only leads him to renew his abandonment in God. And in the gospel Jesus teaches us about holy fear and what St Josemaría called “holy shamelessness”. Jesus tells us not to fear those who attack him and his disciples. Rather, lose all fear and be courageous in our witness: “So everyone who acknowledges me before men, I also will acknowledge before my Father who is in heaven; but whoever denies me before men, I also will deny before my Father who is in heaven.” Yet it is right to fear and keep well away from Satan, as one would sensibly keep away from a vicious beast: “Do not fear those who kill the body but cannot kill the soul; rather fear him who can destroy both soul and body in hell.” Finally, what should most give us confidence is to know how much God loves and values us: “Fear not; you are of more value than many sparrows.”
Homily on the readings of the XII Sunday in Ordinary Time (A)
The priest Luis Herrera Campo offers its nanomiliaA short one-minute reflection for these Sunday readings.
