11 September 2019
Wednesday of the Twenty-third Week in Ordinary Time
For many of us, today’s date will long bear a sad significance, marking year after year the latest anniversary of the dreadful evil carried out in 2001, and we needn’t look far to see that the world hasn’t been the same ever since. The men who carried out the attacks were rightly called terrorists, and the terror they brought into the world eighteen years ago still runs wild throughout our society; it seems we live, on some level, in a constant state of fear.
As Christians we know that fear is the chief tool of our Enemy, Satan, as he has no true power over us. When we give in to fear, when we bow to the intimidation of evil, we have no peace, no joy and, really, no life. We were not made to live in fear, but in confidence that God is with us and loves us, and that no matter the outcome of any given situation, He will not lose us, nor we Him. The goal of the terrorists was not to defeat America: it was to destroy our peace, and to a degree they succeeded. This is the goal of our spiritual enemy as well, for if he succeeds in destroying our peace, it is far easier for him to tempt and mislead us toward things that promise falsely to comfort us and serve rather to remove us further and further from the peace only Jesus can give us: “Peace I leave with you; my peace I give to you. Not as the world gives do I give it to you. Do not let your hearts be troubled or afraid,” (John 14:27).
So blessed are you who are poor, for God offers you a Kingdom should you seek Him and His Cross as your greatest wealth. Blessed are you who are now hungry, for you will be satisfied; is not your God the one who fed His people in the desert, and whose Son gives us His Body and Blood at every Mass? “Therefore I tell you, do not worry about your life, what you will eat or drink, or about your body, what you will wear. Is not life more than food and the body more than clothing?” (Matthew 6:25). Blessed are those who are weeping, for you will laugh; no sadness in this life lasts forever. There is no well of endless tears, but in God is found a well of endless joy, for in the Kingdom to come “He will wipe every tear from their eyes, and there shall be no more death or mourning, wailing or pain, for the old order has passed away,” (Revelation 21:4).
In our times of suffering or uncertainty we have a choice: we can succumb to fear and seek worldly, temporary solutions to our problems and find ourselves in deeper trouble than before, or we can reach out to our Father and allow Him to be our God. Our own instinct for self-reliance is yet another thing we must give up if we are to be true disciples of Jesus, for is not the heart of our faith the belief that our need was so great and our predicament so impossible to remedy that God Himself sent His Son to rescue us? And yet we insist that we can take care of ourselves! Whenever we find ourselves in suffering and need the Serpent hisses anew that first temptation “…you will be like gods…” (Genesis 3:5), and how tempted we always are by this. There is a certain humiliation in being unable to provide for oneself or to solve one’s own problems; we hesitate to ask for help because of our own pride. But in our Gospel today Jesus promises that God will aid those in need; in fact they are declared blessed because they are in need of God’s help! Woe is promised to those who do not see their need for God, because when their worldly comforts fail them, they will have nothing: their false gods of wealth, food, laughter, and reputation will have abandoned them. It is far better to rely upon God than to rely upon the passing things of this world, for His help is everlasting. Jesus promises fulfillment and aid to those who suffer in this life, the same Jesus who says “Heaven and earth will pass away, but my words will not pass away,” (Matthew 24:35). Let us trust Him and take up our Crosses, fearing nothing at all, for the Jesus that defeated Death and Hell not only has gone before us, but is with us always (Matthew 28:20).