Be Not Afraid
Our commitment to Christ will be put to the test.
We will hear whispered warnings and denunciations, as Jeremiah does in this Sunday’s First Reading. Even so-called friends will try to trap and trip us up.
For His sake we will bear insults and be made outcasts – even in our own homes, we hear in the Psalm this week.
As Jeremiah tells us, we must expect that God will challenge our faith in Him, and probe our minds and hearts, to test the depths of our love.
“Do not be afraid,” Jesus assures us three times in the Gospel.
Though He may permit us to suffer for our faith, our Father will never forget or abandon us. As Jesus assures us, everything unfolds in His Providence, under His watchful gaze – even the falling of the tiniest sparrow to the ground. Each one of us is precious to Him.
Steadfast in this faith, we must resist the tactics of Satan. He is the enemy who seeks the ruin of our soul in Gehenna, or hell.
We are to seek God, as the Psalmist says. Zeal for the Lord’s house, for the heavenly kingdom of the Father, should consume us, as it consumed Jesus (see John 2:17). As Jesus bore the insults of those who blasphemed God, so should we (see Romans 15:3).
By the gracious gift of himself, Jesus bore the transgressions of the world, Paul tells us in the Epistle this week. In rising from the dead, He has shown us that God rescues the life of the poor, that He does not spurn His own when they are in need. In His great mercy, He will turn toward us, as well. He will deliver us from the power of the wicked.
That is why we proclaim His name from the housetops, as Jesus tells us. That is why we sing praise and offer thanksgiving in every Eucharist. We are confident in Jesus’ promise – that we who declare our faith in Him before others will be remembered before our heavenly Father.
Imitation of Christ
Bk. II, chap.1
You have here “no lasting city,” (Heb 13,14); wherever you are, you are a stranger and a sojourner; you will never at any time have peace until you are intimately one with Christ. Why in this world do you search to right and left, when this is no place for your repose? You ought to be living the life of heaven; a wayfarer despising all earthly things. Everything perishes and so do you. Cling not, lest you be caught and perish.
Let your thoughts be in the presence of the Most High, your prayer sent up to Christ unceasingly. If you cannot gaze upon high heaven, then repose in the sufferings of Christ, and dwell gladly in his sacred wounds. For if with devotion you escape to the wounds of Christ and to his stigmata beyond price, then you will know great comfort in affliction; you will not much mind being despised by men, and will easily endure malicious gossip. Christ too was in the world despised by men; in time of greatest need he was left by friend and acquaintance to be taunted alone. Christ was ready to suffer and be spurned; have you the impudence to make a complaint?…
Hold up for Christ’s sake with the help of Christ, if you would reign with Christ.
If you had once gone right inside Jesus and had tasted a little of his burning love; then you would care not at all for your own good or ill-convenience, but rejoice to be taunted; for the love of Jesus makes a man despise himself. The lover of Jesus and of truth, the truly inward man, he who is no slave to disordered feelings; he it is who can freely turn to God, raising himself above himself in spirit and taking joy in rest. The true man of taste, taught more of God than of men, is he on whose tongue things taste as they are; not as they are said or esteemed to be.
Saint Gregory Palamas
Sermon for the Sunday of All Saints; PG 151, 322-323
“Nothing is concealed that will not be revealed.”
From the highest heaven, God offers the riches of his grace to all men. He is himself the source of salvation and of light, whence mercy and goodness flow eternally. But not all men make use of his strength and his grace in the perfect exercise of virtue and the realization of its marvels; only those do it who put their resolutions into practice and who prove their attachment to God through actions, those who have completely turned away from evil, who firmly adhere to God’s commandments and who fix the eyes of their spirit on Christ, the Sun of justice (Mal 3:20).
From the highest heaven, Christ offers the help of his arm to those who fight, and he exhorts them through these words of the Gospel: “Whoever acknowledges me before men I will acknowledge before my father in heaven.” As a servant of God, every one of the saints acknowledges that, in this transitory life and before mortal men, he is for Christ; he does so during a short lapse of time and in the presence of a small number of men. Whereas our Lord Jesus Christ… will acknowledge us in the world of eternity, before God his Father, surrounded by the angels and the archangels and all the powers of heaven, in the presence of all men, from Adam to the end of time. For all will rise and will stand before Christ’s tribunal. Then, in the presence of all and visible to all, he will make known, he will glorify, and he will crown those who proved their faith to him until the end.
