“…Yet today, tomorrow, and the next day I must be on my way” (Luke 13:33)
Year C: Second Sunday in Lent, 13 March
2022
In
recent times I have been listening to and watching in complete amazement and
astonishment 18 year old Ukrainian volunteers – boys really – addressing journalists
and saying that they are bit scared but at the same time but that they must do
what they have to do.
Is
it realistic to advise someone not to be afraid even if we know and trust that
God is with us through it all? I suggest a nuanced reply. It is entirely natural and rational and
unavoidable that we would experience fear throughout our lives. It is the way
of survival and growth to learn about facing and living with danger.
This
leads us to ponder the meaning of trust in the midst of daily life especially
at times of great uncertainty and not a little anxiety as we hopefully emerge
from a pandemic and embrace the shock of a new and somewhat terrifying world
ushered in during the early hours of Thursday the 24th February
2022. Our world will never be the same again.
And for those fleeing or staying to defend across the land of the
Ukraine millions are faced with stark and dreadful choices. We cannot even
begin to imagine what it is like.
Jesus
faced fear and extreme hostility as we learn in today’s Gospel reading. He declared: ‘Yet today, tomorrow, and the
next day I must be on my way’. Jesus was
no less human than we are. He felt hunger, pain, fear and desolation as well as
times of great joy. He did not flinch
from his mission. Neither did he succumb
to fear.
Abram,
our Father in faith, was faced with a similar challenge when God asked him to leave
his home country and travel to an unknown place. Abraham or Father of the nations,
as he was to be called, trusted in God and allowed God to lead him. A covenant was made by God to protect and reward
Abraham with many heirs. We are the
children of Abraham along with many outside the household of Christian faith.
We
may note that Abram’s act of faith – abandonment to the will of God – did not mean
that he would not face fear. In Genesis
15:12, after Abram put his trust in the Lord, we read the following:
“As the sun was going down, a deep sleep fell upon Abram, and a deep and terrifying darkness descended upon him”.
In
other words, the act of faith – abandoning our will to the will of God – does not
abolish fear. Rather, we continue to experience fear but now we travel with God
through the fear because, as the psalmist sings, ‘The Lord is my light and my
salvation; whom then shall I fear?’ and again, ‘The Lord is the strength
of my life; of whom then shall I be afraid?’
God
is indeed in the hellish places of our present world. And God cares infinitely for each creature
even those inflicting great suffering on others.
May
each of us face and acknowledge fear but do what we have to do in the name of
Christ who leads us forward.
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