Do not fear

When it was evening on that day, the first day of the week, and the doors of the house where the disciples had met were locked for fear of the Jews, Jesus came and stood among them and said, "Peace be with you." (John 20:19)

At that point the young priest, surrounded by a small group of listeners united in prayer just like every Tuesday, asked: which is the first of all the commandments? To that, all responded together: “you shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your soul and with all your strength. And you shall love your neighbor as yourself”. Good, he continued, and then why do we not always succeed? Who among you can tell me what is the opposite of love? Hate, timidly responded one of them. Hate, repeated the parish priest. What is hate? Try to think. Let each one try to visualize what is the thing that we really hate. Have you succeeded? Do you see it in your mind’s eye? Now, let us focus on the sentiment that we experience when faced with this thing that we really hate with all our heart. Do we want to say it out loud? Sure, do not be ashamed to admit that you also experience this feeling. You, Rosanna, what do you hate? Spiders, she answered. And you, Maria? I… I hate mice because when I was a child a mouse jumped on my leg. I hate lies, added Rosa with a philosophical air. And I, violence. I , on the other hand, hate those who speak on the top of their voices. And I, thieves.

Very good, added the young priest, as if he were now summing it all up. Now you have unmasked the real enemy of love. His name is not “hate” but rather “fear”.

It is fear that provokes us to experience feelings of condemnation and distances us from things and people. It inspires in our hearts defense mechanisms or aggression. Indeed there is no one who is more fearful than the one who attacks others regularly and willingly. The aggressor and the aggressed are united by one mechanism: fear. Exaggerated and disproportionate love of ourselves (adopted children of fear!), makes us take care of our own wounds, protecting them from other attacks, rather than loving and practicing mercy towards those who provoke us or attack us.

It is this same fear that causes us to pull back when faced by the demands of the aggressors and the poor, those who live in misery in our epoch. Their state provokes us, questions our certainties and opens old wounds… Because of fear we are not capable of seeing before us a brother but rather perceive an enemy who disturbs our inner peace, a threat to our interior equilibrium.

Diversity destabilizes us and then the fear of everything that is different from us pervades.

Prejudice, the assumption that we know everything necessary about the other, is born of the fear to really get to know the risk that the other presents in that he might indeed destabilize our certainties.

The fear to lose ourselves in the other, to evaporate for love, to be invaded by joy and pain that are not ours, to know how to heal the sufferings that surround us. This is the obstacle to our love.

An article of faith which is very common among the youth today is that in the Bible “Do not fear” is present 365 times. I like to think that this is true and that the Lord whispers this into our ear every day of every year.