Often times the responsorial psalm is overlooked in our readings. We often focus first on the Gospel and then on the first or second reading. In the midst of this is the Psalm. However, in light of the fact that we are in that period between Ascension Thursday and Pentecost Sunday and there is an interesting psalm, I thought it might be good to look at the theme of the psalm and a common theme in Christianity. The theme is fear.

The Psalm begins with the words, The Lord is my light and my salvation whom should I fear. Generally, we attribute these psalms to King David, who was not only King, he was a warrior king and as we know warriors can give you many reasons to be afraid. But generally despite fear, then do what they are called to do.

Fear can approach us from many avenues. Maybe we have an unexpected letter or phone call that give us potential bad news. Now this is what fear highlights, what potentially could happen. If fear takes over our lives, we become crippled by it afraid of what potentially may happen, when in fact, it may not happen at all. This is the first element of fear. It may happen or it may not. Yet, when we focus on what may happen to be what will happen and become crippled by that anticipation we are disabled by fear.

Yet, God has always told us not to fear at all. Why? Because the future belongs to Him!. He is in charge of our future and, therefore, when we are afraid, we do so by not trusting Him. God has the potential of doing anything to change the potential path of any element of our lives. Yet, we have to understand this within the context of whom we are.

If we look at the rest of the Psalm we can see the words, One thing I ask, this I seek to dwell in the house of the Lord all the days of my life. That is also God’s goal for us. Therefore, everything he does for us has one or two planned outcomes, brings us closer to the house of the Lord or through us brings others closer to the House of the Lord. God’s goal for us is to bring us to holiness.

Why is it so bad to succumb to fear. Simple, look at what the Apostles did when they succumbed to fear, they abandoned Christ. When we succumb to fear we do the same thing. We focus on the potential of what will happen and take our eyes off of Christ. This is why fear is so poisonous to our spiritual life and our relationship with Christ. Fear cuts off our relationship with Christ.

What does the psalmist do? He says he will not fear because the Lord is his light and salvation. What is the opposite of fear: trust. No matter what happens to us we need to put our trust in Christ because he does in deed care for us. I have dealt with people who become literally so crippled by fear that they enter a dark emotional hole and never come out of it. I actually warn relatives of those whom I see becoming so fearful to do what you can to get them out of that hole, because it is very deep and very dark.

Jesus tells us that perfect love casts out fear. That goes both ways, we trust in His love for us and we do not fear no matter what may happen. This allows our love to grow for him which casts our fear.

Why do we do this, we can find that answer in the second chapter of Sirach. We fear that grave misfortune may overtake us, but in Sirach, grave misfortune is the fire that tests our faith and our heart that helps us to grow stronger in the Lord that as I said leads us closer to the holiness. In fact, St. James tells us to consider it pure joy when we experience difficulties for through those difficulties our faith is growing. This is why we must never fear what may happen, because the more we trust in God, the more whatever happens will lead us closer to Christ. As I told CNN while at the Cathedral, They showed the St. Rose window that is to the left of the altar as one is looking out to the congregation. The quote she used was that if people knew how much their difficulties brought them closer to Christ they would ask for more of them.

Yet, there is another reason why it is essential not to fear. When we fear we become silenced. Remember the great tactic of evil is to intimidate its opponents. We can see it illustrated well in the Lion Witch and the Wardrobe where the evil queen rules by intimidation. You have heard the saying that all that is needed for evil to exist is for men of good will to do nothing. If you are afraid you have been intimidated into silence and evil will win.

I was speaking to a former parishioners this week. His is the tragic story of one of my former confirmation students, his son, who was murdered in Charlestown. His sister no longer goes to mass because she is angry at the loss of her brother. They never caught the murderer. The saying is that the police know who he is but they do not have enough evidence to arrest him. We all know of the code of silence in Charlestown, but that family will never know justice as long as people are intimidated into silence. Evil reigns when the good remain silent. Yet, evil will always try to intimidate the good into the silence so that evil will reign. That is why one must never allow fear to silence us.

Yet, when we choose to not to fear, we go against all our instincts. Kind of like when I parachuted in California. The minute I let go of the wing on the plane at 3000 feet and 90mph although in my head I knew what I was doing, it was like every cell of my body cried out that I just did something stupid. I just jumped after all out of a perfectly good airplane.

That is similar to what happens when we choose to trust while the rest of our body tells us to stay silent and mind our own business. We go through that painful period where we choose to obey our fears or obey our Lord. When we choose the latter, great things happen, when we choose the former, we lose everything and become enslaved to the whims of evil. Yet, when we choose to do God’s will despite our fears, great surprises happen.

Today’s psalm is one that I am going to encourage you to keep in mind. When we focus on Christ we dismiss our fears and act on his truth. We we focus on our fears we abandon Christ and become a slave to fear and intimidation. Perfect Love casts out all fear and leads us closer to Christ in total trust.

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