Read­ing Time: 3 minutes

Introduction

“I hear so many whis­per­ing. Ter­ror on every side” What are they whis­per­ing? “Denounce him! Let us denounce him!” These words threatened proph­et Jeremi­ah that he became con­fused and afraid. As he com­plained, all his friends are wait­ing for him to slip, hop­ing that he falls into their trap (First Read­ing). Although Jeremi­ah laments that the Lord deceived him, over­powered him and seized him, and that the word of which he pro­claims has brought him insult and reproach (Jer 20:7–9), yet, Jeremi­ah is con­vinced that the Lord is with him like a mighty war­ri­or. There­fore, his per­se­cutors will stumble and not pre­vail over him. Accord­ing to him, they will fail and be thor­oughly dis­graced; and their dis­hon­our will nev­er be for­got­ten. What Jeremi­ah means by these words is that every attempt to stop the pro­clam­a­tion of the Gos­pel and the name of God, will be thwarted by God him­self. Jesus’ instruc­tion to the apostles not to fear is to be under­stood the same way.

Do not be afraid

All of us want to be strong. We want to be in con­trol. We want to show oth­ers that we can make it in this world. Unfor­tu­nately, we all have fears too. They may be as a res­ult of bad exper­i­ences or they may just “pop up” one day and catch us off guard. Fears come in all shapes and dimen­sions. It might be a fear of heights or of an anim­al or bug, but whatever your fears may be, they can stop you in your tracks. By defin­i­tion, fear is a dis­tress­ing emo­tion aroused by impend­ing danger, evil, pain, or loss, wheth­er the threat is real or ima­gined. In psy­cho­logy, fear (also para­noia, pho­bia) is per­ceived as a vital response to phys­ic­al and emo­tion­al danger. Often, we fear situ­ations that are far from life or death, and thus, hang back for no good reas­on. Again, trau­mas or bad exper­i­ences can trig­ger a fear response with­in us that is hard to quell. Fear is a power­ful enemy, so we need a power­ful allyto over­come it. For Chris­ti­ans, Jesus and faith in God are those power­ful allies to quell every fear. For fear of the Jews, the dis­ciples locked them­selves up in a room (John 20:19).

Conclusion

The dis­ciples should not fear any­one so long as they stand by the truth. By truth here is meant the truth of the Gos­pel, not our sub­ject­ive truth. It is only the pro­clam­a­tion of the Gos­pel without fear that will expose every hid­den agenda. In like man­ner, we should not be afraid of pro­claim­ing the Gos­pel. We should do that con­vin­cingly and without mind­ing whose ox is gored. To sub­ject the Gos­pel to people’s reac­tion is fear­ing and pleas­ing those who can harm and kill only the body. And doing so is sin­ning against he who can kill both body and soul. Jeremi­ah should not neut­ral­ize nor even sup­press God’s mes­sage because he is being threatened. It is bet­ter to be threatened by men than to be threatened by God. Those Church lead­ers who have com­prom­ised their proph­esy­ing capa­city due to money, wealth, hon­our, fame, and pos­i­tion should amend their way or give way. Before send­ing his dis­ciples out, Jesus pre­pared them both intel­lec­tu­ally, socially, cul­tur­ally, spir­itu­ally and psychologically.

FOR DETAILS, GET YOUR OWN COPIES OF THE BOOK “THE WORD OF LIFE:
SUNDAY REFLECTIONS” (vols. I‑II-III)!! The reflec­tion for the 12^th Sunday of the year (A) is found in The Word of Life, vol. I, pages 343–348. Happy reading!

For details on how to get it, con­tact the author on this link: https://m.me/uchennabiblia?fbclid=IwAR2yeg4a6sDGBp9QGkIvKj6FSADumMokN6lshdE0zuo-JHs6qOmlhA7jyHo
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or simply send an SMS on 08116100926, and I will get back to you.

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