Fear No One But God

So, here is today's gospel:

Jesus said to the Twelve:
“Fear no one.
Nothing is concealed that will not be revealed,
nor secret that will not be known.

What I say to you in the darkness, speak in the light;

what you hear whispered, proclaim on the housetops.
And 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.
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.
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.” (Mt. 10:26-33)

What struck me (hard enough to be knocked into the river) was this concept that we should "fear no one but God." Think about that. When is the last time you evaluated if you had sufficient fear of God?

I am struggling to find the words to explain how this hit me. Fear of God is awe and wonder at who God is. Fear of God is being completely bowled over by His majesty, His all-surpassing huge, great love, power, goodness, being. It is being reduced to, well, completely human proportions in the light of His being. It is seeing ourselves truly, as we truly are -- tiny specks of creation, deeply loved, but totally dependent on Him. Abject need. I am completely powerless to make myself. This is the fear of God (I think it is fair to say.)

Jesus says, fear no one, no person. No human being should be given this kind of power over me by me. It is not right for me to be defined by another human being, nor is it right for me to try to lord it over someone else and "make" them -- reduce them as Fr. Giussani would say. No other human being should have me fawning in awe and fumbling around as I try anything to win their approval. No human being should be made my god. My self, of course, is included.

It is the intimacy with Jesus that is to shape our public lives. ("What I say to you in darkness, proclaim in the light...") This of course makes us not adversaries of others, but lovers. This also means that we will be both loved and hated, embraced and misunderstood. It means we proclaim boldly what is borne of the intimacy we have known, and it means we listen reverently to the similar proclamations of others.

Then there is that line that seems so famous in CL: "Even all the hairs of your head are counted." When I heard that line in the context of the rest of what I was hearing, I was really bowled over. I never quite grasped what the big point of a number of hairs was supposed to be in communicating intimate love. But somehow I heard that the reason I am not to allow another to reduce me, the reason I am not to quiver in awe before a mere human and sin by trying to measure myself against another mere human is that the mere human God has made me is embraced with unspeakable, tender affection by my Creator. "The other person" is a tiny doot of creation, loved by God, and I am a tiny doot of creation, loved by God. Whatever scuttles we have, whatever inequalities that cause angst, are in comparison, on such a minuscule scale compared with the love that holds us both in existence.

What does it mean to acknowledge Jesus before others? Surely it is not to claim an intellectual, or even spiritual, belief that a God exists. To acknowledge Jesus before others is to say, with Him, that God makes me, and God makes you. That is ultimate, it is truth, and it is worth handing over my life for, as Jesus did. To deny Jesus? To say that I make myself, I am my own master, and I am here to usurp you and put you under my thumb: just the opposite of what Jesus came to do.

So the greatest act of love we can do for another is to remind them of who they are, charge them to be who they are: a self, held in existence by and totally dependent upon God, the God of immense, immeasurable love.