Be Not Afraid

Last updated on: January 25, 2025 at 5:14 am by Sherry Antonetti

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Be Not Afraid 2025-01-25T05:14:34-05:00 Sherry Antonetti

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Many who heard the speech given by our former and present President, felt ill at ease with his sweeping indifference to the worries voiced by the Episcopal Bishop, asking for mercy. Ill at ease is too polite, too soft. People feel angry, upset, and disturbed that someone and his followers would froth at the mouth uttering mockeries and slander and smugness that a person of faith speaks the words of Jesus. I am not Episcopal, but I stand with her. I stand with Bishop Mariann Budde. It would be safer, easier, much less hassle to let the news cycle pass and not address this issue but it won’t get easier, so I must.

This evening on Yahoo news, I read about ICE trying to go into an elementary school in Chicago. Later, it was indicated that Secret Service tried to come into the school. However, the confusion lead to a lockdown in the school. There were fake posts indicating similar incidents that did not happen in my own county.

Fear is running rampant. It seems by design.

On CNN, I saw troops being assembled to cover the border and heard of raids in a town in New Jersey at a restaurant, and found additional details on Reuters. “In a raid of a business establishment in Newark, outside New York City, Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agents failed to produce a warrant as they detained “undocumented residents as well as citizens,” Mayor Ras Baraka said in a statement.”

The fear seems rather justified if the government is now randomly rounding up the usual suspects. Society will not bear this kind of militarization of life, we will become a people ruled, not governed if our own military is used as a blunt intrument in places of worship, education, and free enterprise.

If we become fearful of our government, we cease to be a free people.

So how do we remain free?

We start by looking at our own behavior –are we enabling freedom, or are we using law and power as a wedge to build walls around anyone who displeases. Online and in real life, we must choose. We must wrestle with our own hearts proclivities to indulge, to desire comfort and security over the cross. Embrace the cross, which is always the harder path in this life, always the one that requires something of us, and also, the only one that redeems.

So I beseech those who are posting mocking photos of the Bishop to reflect. How is the mockery Catholic, or Christ like or even American? I ask those who trade in what they consider secret knowledge –that the former President is a Mason, or that Elon was just doing a Roman salute. –I’m a fan of ancient literature and art and all of that and no. Don’t make an excuse to convince yourself you didn’t see anything. Be not afraid to say what you see, or to speak up. There will be consequences, but be not afraid.
Photo by Felix Mittermeier: https://www.pexels.com/photo/gray-cross-on-mountain-2832052/
Embrace the cross. We need to love our neighbors, and those we consider enemies too. Pray for them, and for the humility to recognize we too, are probably, someone’s enemy. We too, cause the cross, the crucifixion of our Lord, and the pain and suffering in others lives by our actions and inactions, by our words and our silence, by our sins we knowling commit, and those we compound.

Our faith has never demanded power, but humility. God is not found in the Gospel of Prosperity. Our God says, “Blessed are the poor,” and He means it –the poor in spirit, and those who are powerless in this world. They shall be blessed, and woe to those of us who are rich, who want for nothing, who think they do not need God.

The Gospel of Prosperity is a lie from beginning to end, because it presumes that anyone who is poor, is somehow less in God’s eyes, that they deserve their suffering. Suffering was never part of the original plan. It does not come from God. God allows suffering, as it is the manifest consequence of His gift of free will. We can, and we do, sin. Our sins carry compound consequences, to our own souls and those of others, and to all of time and all of creation. All the sins before and yet committed, every sin bring death into the world; death of trust, death of community, death of beauty, death of peace, death of hope, death of creation, death of joy, death of good. Every sin harms us beyond the moment, every sin makes us more lost. We owe a debt we can never repay, and it is only God’s forebearance that offers us the gift of salvation, the opportunity to be claimed as sons and daughters. All our lives, we are nothing but poor ungrateful servants who poorly manage the gifts we’ve been given…and on our own, we are nothing but lost sheep.

Fortunately, the Good Shepherd seeks every lost sheep, as if they were the only lost sheep. So God does not throw up His hands at our stupidity, at our sin, but seeks us every way we allow. So we can always receive His grace if we but seek it. That takes humility –and humility is something in short supply right now. Each of us is profoundly broken, and only the most humble, are able to bear knowing that reality about themselves.

Humility is not self loathing, but selfless loving. When we love God and our neighbor with all our heart, with all our strength and with all our lives, there isn’t any room or any time for that matter, for the nonsense of sin. Humility allows for forebearance –to suffer ills well, to turn the other cheek, to endure. If at a prayer service, the President cannot bear being asked to consider a perspective beyond his own without snarling about the person speaking being a “nasty person,” and “not good at her job,” for calling Him to be bigger than his platform or his partisan rhetoric, he lacks forebearance and humility. He thinks the office grants with it, unequivocal power and unilateral praise.

So we need to pray even more for those in power, and those charged with shepherding this nation, and for all those who seek to be shepherds to the people. Ask the Blessed Mother to point our nation’s whole heart towards Christ. We need to love and serve God by loving and serving others. We can only do that, moment by moment, building up one action or thought or prayer offered after another.

I’m reminded of Les Miserables, and the line “to love another person is to see the face of God.” It’s not dependent upon who that person is, or how they look. If we look for Christ, we will find Him. We will find Christ in the poor, in the LGBQTA+ community, in the immigrants, in the sick, in the homeless, in anyone struggling with their cross. If we see someone who is paralyzed by pain in some fashion, there is the image of Christ crucified, a person nailed to the hardness of the world by sin. It is our job to alleviate in any way we can, by ministering. We must accompany like Mary and the Beloved Apostle.

Carry like Simon pressed into service. Wipe the face like Veronica. Offer what we can like Joseph of Arimathea to one who as far as he knew at the time, could do nothing to repay him for his generosity or kindness. We must be vessels of grace to a broken world that desperately needs oil poured on its wounds, and bread and wine to be strengthened for the journey. If we want a lighter kinder world, we will have to be the means by which it becomes something other than dark, cold and unkind.

Every person of good will must decide each day, they will not be a source of something other than grace. If the President and his policies will not be merciful, then we must be more merciful still. It is only grace that will bring about something better. Lean into the grace, God is bigger than our time, than all our times. Go forth to share it what you have.

Photo by Eva Bronzini: https://www.pexels.com/photo/fresh-fish-with-ice-6149078/ Photo by Geraud pfeiffer: https://www.pexels.com/photo/bread-food-dinner-lunch-6605349/