What are you afraid of? How do you face moments of fear? - Daily Reflections January 7,2015

NO FEAR!

 

God knows how often I have been mortally afraid in my life. I was afraid once when traversing a treacherous portion of a climb we had when I was young, restless, adventurous and impulsive. A guest who planed in from the States convinced me he was an experienced climber. He was geared to the hilt! But when he saw what we were supposed to get through, he started shaking. Unknown to my young team in their teens, I was also shaking. I was afraid, too, for my life when I organized the community where I lived to fight a menacing social issue that targeted young and innocent lives. Everything was going well until I received a note that told me to stop everything if I wanted to continue celebrating Masses.

       Blessed Joseph Kowalski was a young Salesian priest in Krakow, Poland. As a young man, he probably had a premonition about his coming martyr’s death. He entertained thoughts about suffering for the Lord and he did so valiantly one day in 1941. He was killed mercilessly when he refused to trample on his rosary beads. St. John Paul II beatified him in Krakow in 1999.

       “There is no fear in love,” writes John the Evangelist. To be fearless, in this sense, means to have courage, and that courage is born, not of wistful thinking or of a lack of awareness of what danger lurks behind, but of an intimacy with God that one knows of deeply and personally.

       Life is a call to courage. It is a call to the heights of sanctity, understood as intimacy with God. The good psalmist understood it when he prayed: “I lift up my eyes to the mountains, from where shall come my help. My help comes from the Lord who made heaven and earth.”

       Blessed Joseph Kowalski and all the holy martyrs were lovers first of God before being courageous martyrs. In their life and in their death, they proved beyond doubt that “God is love, and whoever remains in love remains in God and God in him.” Fr. Chito Dimaranan, SDB

 

REFLECTION QUESTIONS: What are you afraid of? How do you face moments of fear?

 

Dear Lord, teach me how to be brave and courageous, to meet every difficulty and especially the unknown, relying on the victory that You have won for me.