True Freedom 12th Sunday Ordinary Time Year A
Jeremiah 20:10-13; Psalm 69; Romans 5:12-15; Matthew 10:26-33
In today’s Gospel passage, Jesus tells the Apostles to “fear no one”, to not be afraid. Shortly after saying this, Jesus specifies the fear that he does not want his Apostles to have by saying, “And do not be afraid of those who kill the body but cannot kill the soul; rather, be afraid of the one who can destroy both soul and body in Gehenna.”
With the help of divine grace, may we be freed from our fear of physical death while, at the same time, retain holy fear of dying spiritually, of not attaining heaven, the most important destination of our lives.
The more we grow in love of God, of Jesus, and love of our neighbor the less we will be afraid of physically dying since we will be willing, out of love of God and neighbor, to give our lives for those we love, since we prioritize God and what is best and holy for our neighbor over even our own lives, as Jesus shows us and how Jesus shows us through his saints.
St. Paul in the Second Reading, relates all death, physical and spiritual to sin: “Through one man sin entered the world, and through sin, death, and thus death came to all men, inasmuch as all sinned”. This means that our physical death was not originally planned by God but was permitted by God after Adam and Eve sinned. God sent his son, Jesus, into the world, and Jesus, out of love for us, experienced physical death on the Cross, not so that we do not have to physically die but rather so that we can experience physical death with Jesus and in so doing, be welcomed with Jesus into eternal life, where sin and death will be no more.
Our way to heaven is the same way that Jesus came into this world and entered heaven by ascending with his body. That way includes experiencing the sufferings of this world, but with Jesus and through Jesus. As we collaborate more with Jesus, our Heavenly Father, in the love of the Holy Spirit, frees us from this world of sin and death for a greater world, the heavenly world that is to come and is here but not fully.
We at times, though, want to be saved by God, observes Benedict XVI, not for the heavenly world but for this world, liberated in this world within the “worldliness” of this world.[1] Describing this desire, he wrote:
How often we wish that God would show himself stronger, that he would strike decisively, defeating evil and creating a better world. All ideologies of power justify themselves in exactly this way; they justify the destruction of whatever would stand in the way of progress and the liberation of humanity. We suffer on account of God’s patience. And yet, we need his patience. God, who became a lamb, tells us that the world is saved by the Crucified One, not by those who crucified him. The world is redeemed by the patience of God. It is destroyed by the impatience of man.[2]
May God Bless You All – Father Peter
[1] Joseph Ratzinger, El Nuevo Pueblo de Dios: Esquemas para una Eclessiología, trans. Daniel Ruiz Bueno (Barcelona: Herder, 1972), 349.
[2] Benedict XVI, “Mass, Imposition of the Pallium and Conferral of the Fisherman’s Ring for the Beginning of the Petrine Ministry of the Bishop of Rome: Homily of His Holiness Benedict XVI, St. Peter’s Square, Sunday, 24 April 2005,” w2.vatican.va, https://w2.vatican.va/content/benedict-xvi/en/homilies/2005/documents/hf_ben-xvi_hom_20050424_inizio-pontificato.html.
Catholic Evangelization 