Gospel Reflection for Sunday 25th June 2023

12th Sunday Ordinary Time – by Fr Brian Maher OMI

Gospel Reflection for Sunday June 25th 2023

When Jesus walked the tracks and trails of Israel the world was a very small place.

Travel was difficult and mostly used for trade. Most ‘ordinary’ people could barely read and write. Communication over any distance was by sea and it was slow and unreliable. Scientific knowledge hardly existed, with a mix of religion, superstition and ignorance used to explain both the wonderful and traumatic experiences of life.

Today we cannot even imagine a world that small. Travel is quick, easy and accessible. For most in our world education and literacy is guaranteed. Communication from one corner of the earth to the other is instant, cheap and available to all. In all scientific endeavours our boundaries of knowledge are being pushed back at frightening speeds, with our cosmos ever revealing more of its vastness and wonder.

When Jesus, in today’s Gospel spoke about the “hairs of our head being numbered by God, and not even a sparrow falling from the sky without God’s knowledge…”, it would have seemed awesome to those listening to him. Even in the small and narrow world they inhabited, that God would care for his people that much was beyond understanding.

Today, we know that the Universe we inhabit is almost fourteen billion years old and so vast in scale that numbers or systems of measurement become meaningless. Stars, galaxies and as yet undiscovered forces and objects,  easily outnumber all the grains of sand in all the deserts, and on all of the beaches of the world – and this is just ‘our’ visible Universe! There may be far, far more beyond what we can see.

Considering our present knowledge of the Universe, how much more awesome and wonder-full are the words of our Gospel today. “Not a sparrow falls from the sky without our God knowing and caring about it. Every hair on or head has been counted by our God.” In a cosmos as vast as ours the words of Jesus become even more amazing and awesome. Just try to imagine: The God who “laid the foundations of our universe, and who arranged the changing of times and seasons” (as one of our Sunday Mass Prefaces says), is aware of even a sparrow falling from the sky. And, as the Gospel concludes, “We are worth more than hundreds of sparrows.”

There is, I think, something incredibly comforting in this Gospel. In all of God’s creation, in the vastness of a universe beyond our imagination, we are chosen and invited to share in the very life of God. As the same preface continues, “…yet you formed us in your own image, and set us over the whole world in all of its wonder…”

In the immensity of the Universe we are so tiny as to be utterly insignificant, yet in the eyes of God we are the ones who are vast and possess a dignity which is incalculable.

I feel sad, sometimes, when I hear learned Christians claim that scientific knowledge and religious belief are incompatible, and those who think that the beauty of the story of creation in the Book of Genesis is at odds with evolution or cosmology.

For me, everything I know of our Universe, and every new discovery we make in science only increases my faith and assures me more and more that the love of God is even greater, more personal and more wondrous than I can ever fathom.

Is it any wonder, then, that three times in almost as many sentences Jesus uses the phrase, “do not be afraid” in today’s Gospel? It is a phrase repeated 365 times in the Bible – almost as if God says these words to us every single day of the year!

And yet, we do fear. Death, judgement and hell fill us with terror and our lives become permeated with a sense of sin, guilt and shame. We know from our own experience that any relationship based on fear cannot be healthy and will inevitably fail. If our relationship with God is based on fear, then it too is unhealthy and will never lead to the joy Jesus came to share with us.

When Jesus says, “Do not be afraid” in this Gospel, he says it as a commandment. He doesn’t qualify it in any way, and he offers no exceptions to it. He simply says it; commands it; it is not optional – “Do Not Be Afraid.”

I wonder, when we examine our conscience, how often do we consider this commandment of Jesus and reflect on the hold ‘fear’ might have on my life and the witness this gives to others?

And why are we called “not to be afraid”? Because in the eyes of God each individual person is of infinite value, made in God’s image and likeness, and loved with an eternal love. If God cares for a sparrow falling from the sky, how much more does he care for us?

The Jesus I meet in the Gospels, the man who walked the roads of Israel two thousand years ago, is not a person I could ever fear. His entire life is one of love; in forgiveness, compassion, gentleness, joy and peace there is no place for fear to grow and flourish.

When we truly believe that we are made in God’s own image and likeness, experiencing within ourselves some tiny hint of the Love that is God, and when we move from this to accept that, for God, we are of infinite value and dignity, then there is nothing for fear to grasp or hold on to.

The challenge is, of course, clear to see:

Do I – maybe, can I – believe that I am made in God’s image and likeness?

Do I – can I – believe that, in the eyes of God, my life is of infinite value and dignity?

Many thanks,

Brian.

If you have any comments, questions or thoughts on this scripture reflection, please feel welcome to email me at b.maher@oblates.ie

Do not be afraid of those who kill the body