13th Sunday in Ordinary Time

Readings: 2 Kgs 4:8-11, 14-16a; Rom 6:3-4, 8-11; Mt 10:37-42

VIDEO

Last year a company called 2Wai
had its viral moment 
when it put out an ad
showing a pregnant woman 
talking with her mother by videochat,
getting advice, as one does, 
on pregnancy and parenthood.
The ad skips to ten months later,
when the same woman, 
now with her new child,
is again talking 
by videochat to her mother,
who tells the child a bedtime story
that had delighted the woman 
when she herself was a child.
If you’re paying attention,
you notice that the grandmother
is wearing the same outfit she had worn
in the first conversation,
which is strange, but, whatever…
The ad then skips to ten years later,
and the baby is now a boy,
talking with his grandmother on the phone
as he walks home from school,
sharing with her about his basketball team
and his latest crush.
You notice that the grandmother
is not only wearing the same outfit
as in the previous videochat,
but does not seem to have aged 
in the past decade.
The ad then skips to thirty years later,
and the boy is now a man,
talking with his grandmother on his phone—
still in the same outfit,
still unchanged by time—
telling her that she is becoming a great-grandmother,
getting from her the same advice on parenthood
that had been given to his mother many years before.

By this time you realize that all along
his “grandmother” in an AI avatar 
that his mother created
before he was ever conceived,
using a mere three minutes of video
that she had the foresight to record,
an avatar that is a product you can purchase.
2Wai’s CEO posted the ad with the question
“What if the loved ones we’ve lost 
could be part of our future?”
He probably should have added:
as long as your keep 
your subscription paid up.

We human beings 
like to distract ourselves
from the fact that we will die,
that our loved ones will die,
that the institutions and causes
to which we devote our lives will die.
We distract ourselves with games
both trivial and serious:
with hobbies and entertainment,
with politics and empire building.
And when we can distract ourselves no longer
we try to convince ourselves that death is a problem
that our technology will one day fix,
consoling ourselves with the hope
that immortality is within our grasp.
Yet these distractions and consolations
are simply a sign that, in some sense,
we are already dead,
because we live lives that are shaped
by the fear of death,
and by our schemes for ignoring it
or evading it.

“Whoever finds his life will lose it.”
Whoever finds his life
through diversions that distract us
from the inevitable reality of death,
will lose that life.
Whoever finds her life
through a technological fix
that promises to halt the flow of time,
will lose that life.
Whoever finds his life 
through some app on his phone
that can make his long-dead grandmother
an ongoing part of his life,
will lose that life.
Because in all these cases
the life you think you’ve found
is not life but a simulation of life.
For life, by its nature, is fragile and risky;
and this fragility and risk is a sign
of our essential dependence on God
and our dependence on each other.

But there is another choice.
We can die.
“Whoever loses his life 
for my sake will find it.”
Whoever is buried with Christ 
through baptism into his death,
will find life.
Whoever takes up his or her cross 
and follows after Christ,
will find life.
Whoever prefers the love of Christ
to that of father or mother
or son or daughter
or even AI avatar grandma,
will find life.

This losing of your life
might involve physical death.
Down through the centuries
and in many places today,
to follow Jesus is to risk being killed.
But it often takes less dramatic form.
To lose your life may be to live it
without the consoling distractions
that allow you to ignore 
the essential fragility of life,
that divert you from the truth 
that life is risky and always involves loss,
always involves dependence 
on God and each other.
To lose your life is to live it
without the comforting illusion
that there is or soon will be a technological fix
that can restore lost loved ones to us
and us to them.
To lose your life is to see it
no longer centered on yourself,
but recentered on Jesus, 
crucified and risen,
living eternally for God.

Hear the good news:
You have died with Christ in baptism.
This news is good because it means
that the thing you fear most,
the thing looming over your life
that you seek to evade or avoid,
is something that you have already 
lived through in Christ.
Paul says, “death no longer 
has power over him.”
And death no longer
has power over you,
for you have been raised with him
and are now free to follow him
on the way of the cross.
You are freed to live a life
that is fragile and risky.
You are freed to live a life
that depends on the generosity 
of God and of each other.

We have no need for diversions
to shield us from death’s reality.
We have no need of avatars
who promise us eternity.
We only need Jesus
and his cross and resurrection.
May God in his mercy
have mercy on us all.

12th Sunday in Ordinary Time

Readings: Jer 20:10-13; Rom 5:12-15; Matt 10:26-33

In today’s Gospel, Jesus begins 
by telling his followers to fear no one,
and then goes on to tell them to fear God,
and then again not to fear 
because of God’s all-knowing care.
But isn’t this a bit strange?
Which is it: fear or no fear?

Our Catholic tradition suggests that 
we need to distinguish different sorts of fear.

The first is what the tradition calls “worldly fear,”
by which we mean fear of losing our worldly goods.
This is the sort of fear Jesus speaks of 
when he tells his followers,
“do not be afraid of those who kill the body 
but cannot kill the soul.”
This sort of fear can become sinful
when fear of losing life or wealth or reputation 
holds us back from doing what is right.
It is sinful because it is a sign
that we love something more than we love God
and that we do not trust in the power of God,
who, as Jeremiah says, rescues the life of the poor
from the power of the wicked.

The second is what the tradition calls “servile fear.”
This is the sort of fear Jesus speaks of 
when he tells his followers,
“be afraid of the one who can destroy
both soul and body in Gehenna”—
which was the term that Jesus 
and other Jews of his day
used for the place 
where the wicked will be punished.
This fear of God
is like the fear a servant has of a master;
it is a fear that if one steps out of line 
swift and just retribution will follow.

This fear, unlike worldly fear, is not sinful,
since what you fear losing—
your eternal heavenly reward—
actually is something of surpassing value,
and so it can help keep you from sinning
or make you feel sorrow when you sin,
because you, as the old act of contrition puts it,
“fear the loss of heaven and the pains of hell.”
But while his sort of fear is not sinful, 
in the way that worldly fear is,
it’s also not particularly holy.
The problem with this servile fear is that,
because it is about what I might gain or lose, 
it ultimately remains self-centered 
and not God-centered.
And so, it is not, in itself, a path to holiness.

The path to holiness involves, rather, 
what the tradition calls “filial” or “holy fear”—
the fear akin to worry a child might have
of doing or saying anything 
that might disappoint a beloved parent,
even a parent who would always forgive them,
the fear of disappointing one who is, 
as the old act of contrition puts it,
“all-good and most deserving of my love.”
This is not fear
over what you might lose or gain
but is an awareness of 
the overwhelming presence 
of the all-holy God.
This holy fear is rooted in a sense of awe 
that is akin to what you might feel 
standing on the edge of the Grand Canyon,
safely behind the railing and so not in danger,
yet feeling yourself fading into insignificance
before something so vast.

But it is something more than even this,
because while the Grand Canyon might be
the object of our admiration,
it can’t really be the object of our love,
because it doesn’t love us back,
and all true love is an exchange of love
that grows out of a mutual knowing.
The awe-inspiring Grand Canyon 
is something we can come to know
but it is not something that can know us.

God alone is the object of our holy fear
because God knows us and loves us, 
even better than we know and love ourselves.
This holy fear is not fear of Gehenna,
but an awe-filled standing in the presence 
of the one who knows and loves perfectly,
who sees each beloved sparrow’s fall,
who counts each precious hair of our heads.
This holy fear is the way in which
we come to share in God’s own holiness.
This holy fear persists and is perfected in heaven,
when we live fully in God’s presence
and know God even as we are known.

Which brings us back 
to the seeming contradiction 
in Jesus’s words:
fear or no fear?
We ought to say “no” to worldly fear,
for those who can destroy the body
cannot destroy the soul that is known by God.
We ought to say “yes…but” to servile fear, 
for, if it is the best we can manage,
God can use our self-interested anxiety
over our own salvation
to hold us back from the abyss of sin.
But ultimately the only fear 
that we ought to say “yes” to without qualification,
that we should seek as the pearl of great price,
is the holy fear that grows from knowing and loving 
the God who knows and loves us.

This is the fear that can make us brave,
can make us lose our worldly fear
and even our servile fear,
because it is the fear 
that turns us from ourselves 
and what we can and can’t do
and turns us to Christ 
and what he has done for us,
a gift surpassing all transgression.
As the poet George Herbert wrote
“…all things were more ours by being His;
What Adam had, and forfeited for all,
Christ keepeth now, who cannot fail or fall.”

So let us seek an ever-deeper awareness
of the awful mystery that knows and loves us,
let us foster the fear that makes us brave
so that we can serve Christ and not count the cost,
and let us pray that God, who is merciful,
will have mercy on us all.