This Sunday, Jesus Says ‘Fear No One’ – Then Joins With Us To Face the World

There is no reason to be quiet about what we have found in our faith, Jesus tells his original disciples — and us — in the Gospel for this Sunday, the Twelfth Sunday of Ordinary Time, Year A.

After all, if what we believe is the truth, and it is, those we share it with will one day thank us eternally for telling them — or blame us for leaving them in the dark.

Here are takeaways from the readings for this Sunday’s Mass drawn from Sunday Readings columns at this site and the Extraordinary Story podcast.

First: Soon, everyone will know what we know right now, Jesus says.

In Sunday’s Gospel from Matthew, Jesus says, “Nothing is concealed that will not be revealed, nor secret that will not be known.” He wants us to know that, even if it may be hard for some people to understand the truths of the faith right now, they will soon be obvious to all.

“What I say to you in the darkness, speak in the light; what you hear whispered, proclaim on the housetops,” he says; and they did. Today what he told his small band of followers has become the dominant belief system worldwide.

But there are still many who do not believe the truth. They will, though. Either in life or at death they will discover that all the things around them are dependent for their being on something else and that of course there is a non-dependent Being from whom we all derive, and for whom we all live. They will see that the beauty and order of the cosmos aren’t accidental; they are signs of the loving plan of the God who created us. And they will find that their longing for justice and right is not an evolutionary aberration, but the foundational goodness of the universe, the call of their Creator to follow his way.

They will discover that God the Father is their source and goal; that his Son, Jesus Christ, died for them personally; and that Christians received the Holy Spirit to share this news with the world. As they realize that all of it is true, they will dearly wish they had spent their life for God the way he wanted — and will confront the Christians in their lives, saying “Why didn’t you tell us? You were supposed to tell us!”

And for us, our greatest joy will be in those who we helped to discover God, and our greatest sadness will be the fear that kept us from helping others.

Second: St. Paul lays out even more of the drama of human existence that our neighbors wish they knew.

The Second Readings at recent Sunday Masses have been from St. Paul’s letter to the Romans. Considered his “masterpiece,” he spells out in it exactly how God saves mankind from sin through Jesus Christ.

“Through one man sin entered the world, and through sin, death,” he says this Sunday. This is the doctrine of original sin, which the Catechism calls “the reverse side” of the Good News that Jesus is the Savior of all men. Original Sin is a reality so obvious that G.K. Chesterton called it “The only part of Christian theology which can really be proved.” If you doubt it, he said, just go out in the street — or, we might add, look into your own heart.

Each of knows in our heart of hearts that we are often very good, but also very bad. Our neighbors know it about themselves too: We all know the feeling that we are not quite at home in a universe that somehow is not the way it should be. St. Paul tells us why. We were created for glory, but because of sin, he said, “death reigned from Adam to Moses.” When human beings turn to sin, they take the free gifts of God and use them against him and against each other. When we do that, says the Catechism (No. 400):

“The harmony in which they had found themselves, thanks to original justice, is now destroyed: the control of the soul’s spiritual faculties over the body is shattered; the union of man and woman becomes subject to tensions, their relations henceforth marked by lust and domination. Harmony with creation is broken: visible creation has become alien and hostile to man.”

St. Paul goes on to describe that Adam is the archetype of all men, and sin proliferates “after the pattern of the trespass of Adam.” But Jesus Christ came in Adam’s likeness and became a new archetype, a Second Adam, overpowering the Fall with his grace. If sin proliferated worldwide, says Paul, “how much more did the grace of God and the gracious gift of the one man Jesus Christ overflow for the many.”

When St. Paul wrote this, Christianity remained a persecuted minority tentatively spreading from Jerusalem into the Gentile world. Today, history has shown just how right he is. The Christians he wrote to in Rome did embrace the faith, just as he asked, and Christianity grew by leaps and bounds in each generation, until it transformed the culture of Europe, then the world.

The same rapid success can happen if the Christians of America, the world’s “new Rome,” embrace the faith today.

Third: There is just one condition we have to fulfill, and the victory will be ours: We need to love God more than we love sin.

Jesus makes it clear that he is not afraid to be crucified for telling the truth about the way things are — and that his followers shouldn’t be either. Rather, we should be afraid of not telling the truth. “Do not be afraid of those who kill the body but cannot kill the soul,” he says; “rather, be afraid of the one who can destroy both soul and body in Gehenna.”

A model for this kind of faith is Jeremiah. In our First Reading, he describes the persecution he faces: “I hear the whisperings of many: ‘Terror on every side! Denounce! let us denounce him!’ All those who were my friends are on the watch for any misstep of mine. ‘Perhaps he will be trapped; then we can prevail, and take our vengeance on him.’”

But the haters can’t stop him. “The LORD is with me, like a mighty champion,” he says. “My persecutors will stumble, they will not triumph. In their failure they will be put to utter shame.”

Jesus says in the Gospel that “Everyone who acknowledges me before others I will acknowledge before my heavenly Father, but whoever denies me before others, I will deny before my heavenly Father.” Jeremiah shows us how faith demands this. In the verse before Sunday’s First Reading begins, Jeremiah says, “I say I will not mention him, I will no longer speak in his name. But then it is as if fire is burning in my heart, imprisoned in my bones; I grow weary holding back, I cannot!”

The Church presents us with the readings today so that Catholics will be like Jeremiah; so convinced we can’t help but evangelize, no matter the cost.

We see around us a nation that proclaims its darkness in daylight and proclaims sin from the housetops and asks: Where are the Catholics I put in America? Why aren’t American schools, libraries, stores and town halls besieged by Catholics wanting to share the Church’s social teaching, extol the benefits of the sacraments, and tell the stories of the lives of the saints? Where are the Christians desperate to help their hurting neighbors find true hope?

Are they afraid?

Fourth: The Gospel ends with some famous words of Jesus Christ about just how completely his Father loves his people.

Jesus begins this Sunday’s Gospel by saying “Fear no one,” and ends by explaining why we should not be afraid:

“Are not two sparrows sold for a small coin? Yet not one of them falls to the ground without your Father’s knowledge. Even all the hairs of your head are counted. So do not be afraid; you are worth more than many sparrows.”

God does not just command fearlessness. He also gives us the grace to be fearless. The gifts of the Holy Spirit that we receive at baptism include fortitude, which “enables one to conquer fear, even fear of death, and to face trials and persecutions,” says the Catechism (1808), and each time we receive the Eucharist God strengthens this grace in our soul.

If we think the odds are overwhelming, if we would dearly love to be unafraid and willing to evangelize but find we just can’t, Jesus comes to us in communion to stand with us and share our life as we share his way, truth and life with the world.

By Tom Hoopes