12th SUNDAY OF THE YEAR
‘Noli Timere’ – ‘Do not be afraid’ – were the
last words spoken by the poet Seamus Heaney
to his wife Marie before he died in 2013. They
are the most frequent words spoken by Jesus
to His disciples, and, in today’s extract from
the ‘Discourse on the Mission’ (Ch 10) of St.
Matthew’s Gospel they occur three times. Jesus
is not telling His disciples that there is nothing
to fear. He has already told them that He is
sending them out ‘like lambs among wolves’,
but He is asking them not to be overcome or
paralysed by fear. They must trust in the power
of the Spirit to sustain them.
Commitment to Christ was put to the test from
the beginning and so it is in our time. According
to Pope Francis conditions for Christians are
worse today than they were in the early Church.
At present, 360 million Christians are living in
countries with high levels of persecution and
discrimination. Nearly 6,000 Christians were
killed for their faith in 2022 and more than
2,000 Churches were attacked or closed. The
Christian will always walk on ‘alien soil’ beneath
the sign of the Cross. To stand for Gospel values
is to take a risk, but we are, in the words of Pope
St. Leo the Great (440-’61) ‘Christ bearers’
who are called to greatness and back in the
second century, St. Ignatius of Antioch said that
‘Christianity shows its greatness when it is hated
by the world’. Let us be great then. With God
at our side the only thing we have to fear is fear itself “Noli Timere”