One of the reasons why I always say that we do not earn our way to Heaven by being good or lose Heaven by being bad is because when we think that way, we live at that level of existence. We try to be good to go to Heaven or we get lost in presumption by assuming we are good enough to get to Heaven. No one by the way is. We get to Heaven by responding to God’s love for us in our lives and acting upon it.
There are many reasons why thinking this way is important. One of them you are living right now.
Did you do panic shopping this week? One person bought a whole bunch of toilet paper and when they asked her why, she said, “because everyone else was buying it.”
I hope not we are not doing that.
Granted I hope you went shopping for what you reasonably need. However, please keep in mind that you and I have a whole different way of looking at things because we are rooted in the love of God and our hope is in the promises of Christ.
That means that we witness to these promises by living them and not by living in fear.
We have just finished a world wind week economically, socially and politically. All of this week has been driven by fear and apprehension. However, you and I have a mandate not to live in fear and apprehension. We have to live in the confidence of God’s love in our lives.
Why? Because that is how we serve others who do live in fear and apprehension.
How many times has anyone asked you in passing and even in joking if you believe this is a sign of the end times? It has happened to me a few times but of course people are going to ask me because of what I do.
By the way, do I believe this is such a sign? No.
One of the most powerful sayings in the Bible is “fear is useless what is needed is trust.”Mark 5:36
One of the most powerful sayings in the Bible is “fear is useless what is needed is trust.”Mark 5:36
Jesus many times warned against the living in fear. He even warned that fear will lead you away from God.
If you are afraid, express your feelings to God and take your concerns to God, as do I.
However, as St. Paul says we must live with the knowledge that the love of God has been poured into our hearts so that we may be signs of that love to those who do live in fear.
For that past twenty years many in our society have done all they can to teach people to stay away from the Catholic Church and for that matter to stay away from Christianity in general because unlike Christ they have the answers. That may be true to a point, but they do not have the answers when fear overtakes them.
Our answer is in confidence that Christ will get us through this. However, we must realize our goal is not to go through the current issues free of fear, our goal is to help others especially those who do not now believe get through the current issues free of fear.
We can only do that when we realize that God has poured out his love in our lives, as St Paul says, so that we may live that love in our world.
Let me give you an example: Those who are panic buying are making sure they have what they need and more, however, we want to make sure we have what we may need but not more than that so that others can get what they may need.
If we are concerned only about what we may need we are not living the gospel.
Fear and anxiety will lead you away from Christ. Living off of innuendo and rumor will lead you away from Christ.
I had suggested that during Lent people do a family Rosary and I would encourage that because the greatest danger is not the virus it is fear.
In fact, the scariest fact I learned this week has nothing to do with people getting sick or prices dropping in the stock market. The scariest fact I learned this week is gun sales are up in some places. That is a sign of fear and its dangerous elements.
This week we saw a volatile stock market due to fear. Do you not remember that only ten years ago the stock market fell so far it was at $600?
Now imagine if you acted without fear and bought stock then?
One stock dropped in value to 12 cents. That is twelve pennies. If you panicked and sold that stock for a great loss you would have born the fruit of your panic. However, if you instead did not panic and bought 1000 shares of that stock for twelve cents, you would have paid one hundred twenty dollars. Wednesday, when I wrote this, that same stock was worth 6 dollars a share. You would have made five thousand eight hundred and eighty dollars something like a 5000 percent return on your investment.
During the last market crash one man called one of those financial shows, he was afraid of a run on the bank and took out his whole life savings and brought it home, a few days later his home was robbed and the thieves took among other things that money. He lost everything. Why? Fear.
We do not know what is going to happen tomorrow so we trust God to care for us not only for tomorrow but forever.
That is the point of our faith. Those who reject our faith have faith only in this world, we have a whole different way of thinking. However, in our service to them we need to live in that faith and trust in God.
Fear is useless what is needed is trust. Now is the time when each of us Catholics have a mission to act in faith and show our trust in God to help others live without fear as well.
Meanwhile, I am going to ask you to consider watching a TV show this week. It is from the first year of the series The Twilight Zone. The title is the Monsters Are Due on Maple Street. Look it up and watch it and then pray and live without fear. That is our duty as Catholics.
Questions for discussion
at home or work:
- How can you serve others quietly and without contact?
- Can you help others to not be afraid?
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