Do Not Be Afraid!

Lent Day 33 - Do Not Be Afraid

The fear of death is like a cloud, a terrible shadow that falls over human life and experience. All of our proximate fears are reflections of, and participation in, this primordial fear. It cramps us, turns us in on ourselves, makes us defensive, hateful, violent, and vengeful. Further, most of the structures of oppression in the world are predicated upon the fear of death. Because a tyrant can threaten his people with death, he can dominate them; because a dictator can threaten people with killing, he can perpetrate all sorts of injustice. Whenever the strong (in any sense) overwhelm the weak, we are looking at the ways of death. But what would life be like if we were no longer afraid? What if death had finally lost its sting? Then we would live as the saints do--not immune to suffering, but, if I can put it this way, unaffected by it. We would know that we are loved by a power that transcends death, and this would fill us with an exuberance beyond measure. Jesus came to inaugurate this fearless and death-defying love. Therefore in the great words of John Paul II, which were really the words of Christ, "Do not be afraid." Fr. Robert Barron