Fatherhood and Fear

Do not be afraid of those who kill the body

In the Gospel today Jesus instructed the Twelve as follows: ‘Do not be afraid of those who kill the body but cannot kill the soul; fear him rather who can destroy both body and soul in hell.

Jesus tells us to have the fear of God. What does this mean? Psalm 110 says The fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom.  

Fear is the good God given emotion that should propel us away from danger, evil and sin. Sin is pleasurable in the moment, that is why we are drawn to it, but sooner or later sin is self-destructive. That is why we should flee from it. To strengthen us to overcome temptation, God gives us a special gift of the Holy Spirit called the Gift of Fear to help us get out of and away from the temptations that end in sin.

The Gift of Fear bestows a deeper love and respect for God as our Father. The thing I fear the most, meaning the last thing I want to do is offend God my Father by my sin. After all He has done for me – I don’t want to do anything to harm our relationship.  But we are weak therefore we need a special gift of the Holy Spirit so that we won’t.

The gift of fear also preserves us from being presumptuous and complacent in the spiritual life. You have this gift, but you may not be using it. Ask God to make this Gift active within you.

Do I take seriously the danger of evil, temptation and sin. That with every sin I do damage to my relationship with God, with others and damage to my own soul. In other words, am I aware of my vices, character defects and sin? If you are not aware of the danger you will fall into it.

We are loved

In today’s Gospel Jesus tells us we have a Father, we are loved: Can you not buy two sparrows for a penny? And yet not one falls to the ground without your Father knowing. Why, every hair on your head has been counted. So there is no need to be afraid; you are worth more than hundreds of sparrows.

St. John Paul II in Crossing the Threshold of Hope writes: “we need, perhaps more than ever, the words of the Risen Christ: “Be not afraid!”…Peoples and nations of the entire world need to hear these words. Their conscience needs to grow in the certainty that Someone exists who holds in His hands the destiny of this passing world; Someone who holds the keys to death and the netherworld (cf. Rev 1:18); Someone who is the Alpha and the Omega of human history (cf. Rev 22:13)—be it the individual or collective history. And this Someone is Love (cf. 1 Jn 4:8, 16)—Love that became man, Love crucified and risen, Love unceasingly present among men. It is Eucharistic Love. It is the infinite source of communion. He alone can give the ultimate assurance when He says “Be not afraid!”

Satan seeks to destroy

Satan seeks to destroy the Fatherhood of God in our lives. St JPII continues: As we know from Revelation, in human history the “rays of fatherhood” meet a first resistance in the obscure but real fact of original sin. This is truly the key for interpreting reality…(Satan) attempts to abolish fatherhood, destroying its rays which permeate the created world, placing in doubt the truth about God who is Love and leaving man only with a sense of the master-slave relationship. As a result, the Lord appears jealous of His power over the world and over man; and consequently, man feels goaded to do battle against God. No differently than in any epoch of history, the enslaved man is driven to take sides against the master who kept him enslaved.

The Devil seeks to destroy the Father of God by spreading a lie that sows doubt:

·         God is not a Father you can trust

·         He is a Master who wants to enslave you by his moral law

Those who accept that lie react in one of two ways:

1.    Rebellion against God,

a.    which comes from the resentment you feel for a tyrant

b.    and the desire to break free from the moral and religious laws to decide for yourself what is right and wrong

c.    so that you can do whatever you prefer

d.    God has no place in our Private or Public lives

e.    This is atheistic-secularism

2.    Submission out of servile fear:

a.    you’ll do what God says,

i.    not because you love Him or trust Him,

ii.    but to avoid punishment

iii.    with the hopes of some reward.

b.    This is Islam

i.    Submit to God

ii.    Submission

Secularism is the rebellion against God; Islam is (literally!) “Submission,”

Islam and Secularism are often presented as opposites,

• but they both start from the same horrible lie

• The lie that God is a Master

• rather than a Loving Father

There is another way to respond – that of the Christian who knows

·         God is a Father who loves you!!!

·         God did not intend for us to be His servants or slaves

·         God created us to be His sons and daughters, his friends!

John 15:15 I shall not call you slaves…I call you friends, because I have made known to you everything I have learnt from my Father

Servile fear

(JPII) In order to set contemporary man free from fear of himself, of the world, of others, of earthly powers, of oppressive systems, in order to set him free from every manifestation of a servile fear before that “prevailing force” which believers call God, it is necessary to pray fervently that he will bear and cultivate in his heart that true fear of God, which is the beginning of wisdom. This fear of God is the saving power of the Gospel. It is a constructive, never destructive, fear. It creates people who allow themselves to be led by responsibility, by responsible love. It creates holy men and women—true Christians—to whom the future of the world ultimately belongs. André Malraux was certainly right when he said that the twenty-first century would be the century of religion or it would not be at all.