Saturday of the Fourteenth Week in Ordinary Time
The more seriously we take our lives as Christians, as disciples of Jesus, the deeper will be His invitation to engage in the work He worked, the battles He fought. The entire goal of the Christian life, truly, is for “…the disciple [to] become like his teacher, for the slave [to] become like his master.” To help us to become more like Him He equips us to do what He does, and commands us to follow Him not only to where He is going—Heaven—but to walk that Way (John 14:6) as He walked it, imitating His example in every way possible.
When we consider the life of Jesus, we cannot avoid looking at the struggles, the conflicts, themistreatment: the Cross. What role does the Cross play in our life? For Jesus, it always loomed on the horizon; all throughout John’s Gospel, for example, He continually refers to His “hour”; does the Cross have similar significance in our own life? This is not to say life must be doom and gloom, or that we must seek out suffering. But do we find ourselves tempted to take the path of least resistance in our Christian lives? If so, what are we afraid of?
As we reflected upon earlier in the week, the world around us tolerates our faith less and less; the world becomes more like the towns that rejected Jesus and His apostles. It can be quite intimidating when you feel like the entire world is against you, but our Lord says to us today “…do not be afraid of them! …what I say to you in the darkness, speak in the light; what you hear whispered, proclaim on the housetops…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.” And yet, in many ways, we do not need to be afraid of that Enemy, as Jesus has given us authority over him, and gives us so many gifts—the Sacraments, Scripture, the Church—to protect us from Satan.
What’s more, He Himself tells us not to let fear conquer us, for God is so loving, so attentive to us, that all the hairs of our head are counted. “So do not be afraid…”