‘Mistrust him, Meg, I will not though I should feel my fear even at point to
overthrow me too, yet will I remember how St Peter with a blast of wind began
to sink for his faint faith, shall do as he did, call up on Christ and pray him for
help.’ With these words, Thomas More expressed his trust in God to his
daughter, Margaret. He was writing from the Tower of London in 1535 when he
was indicted for treason for refusing to take the oath recognising the king,
Henry VIII of England, as head of the Church in England, and faced execution.
Thomas More was afraid just like anyone else would in his situation. There are
many cases of people expressing their fear in the Scriptures. Esther felt the same
fear in ‘her mortal peril’ (4:17) and Jeremiah speaks of ‘terror from every side’
(20:10). Jesus himself in Gethsemane, felt ‘terror and anguish’.
When we think of Thomas More or John the Baptist or Jesus, we see the end
product, as it were, when people have come through their fear and we celebrate
their courage. But we know that moving from fear to courage is not an easy
thing – something that just happens, like becoming an adult. It is a process we
painfully grapple with. And we are introduced early to this process. We leave
home to go to school. We leave home again years later to live the life we have
chosen.
We know it is a stage we go through, a ‘game changer’, but it can be scary.
Shakespeare’s Hamlet faced it with the immortal words, ‘To be or not to be, that
is the question.’ If we read on in his speech, we find him saying when we face a
crisis, we think of all sorts of reasons for avoiding a decision!
Thus conscience does make cowards of us all,
And thus the native hue of Resolution
Is sicklied o’er, with the pale cast of Thought,
If we think about what we have to do too much we will end up running away as
Jeremiah was tempted to do (20:9).
But in fact what Jeremiah did was reach out to God in trust.
The Lord is at my side, a mighty hero;
my opponents will stumble, mastered,
confounded by their failure…
Even though he was pilloried and placed in a dungeon he was triumphant.
Someone counted how many times the words, ‘Do not be afraid’, come in the
Scriptures; 350! One for each day of the year! A daily reminder!
25 June 2023 Sunday 12 A Jer 20:10-13 Rom 5:12-15 Mt 10:26-33
By David Harold-Barry SJ
English