Twelfth Sunday in Ordinary Time
“Do not be afraid.” Mt. 10:32
“Do not be afraid,” Jesus tells us.
And yet, we are. We’re very afraid.
At least this is what a New York Times e-article tells us.
Entitled “Prozac Nation Is Now the United States of Xanax,” the article reports that “Anxiety (fear) has become our everyday argot, our thrumming lifeblood: not just on Twitter, but also in blogger diaries, celebrity confessionals, a hit Broadway show, a magazine start-up, a buzzed-about television series, and, defying our abbreviated attention spans, even books.”
This reference to “books” is meant to highlight all those that have been recently published, including “On Edge: A Journey Through Anxiety,” “Monkey Mind,” and “Stopping the Noise in Your Head.”
The Times then suggests that, as a nation, we have entered a “new Age of Anxiety. Monitoring our heart rates, swiping ceaselessly at our iPhones, filling meditation studios in an effort to calm our racing thoughts.”
Or, the author writes, “Consider the fidget spinner: endlessly whirring between the fingertips … annoying teachers, baffling parents.” A couple of youngsters in my family recently introduced me to these gadgets.
Truly mystifying!
Even more frightening is the data from the National Institute of Mental Health that reports some 38 percent of young teenage girls and 26 percent of boys have an anxiety disorder! On college campuses, anxiety is running well ahead of depression as the most common mental health concern.
Meanwhile, according to Google Trends, the number of web searches involving the term “anxiety” has nearly doubled over the last five years.
One observer who hosts a podcast called “The United States of Anxiety” insists this upsurge of anxiety is very understandable. After all, he writes, “We’ve been at war since 2003. We’ve seen two recessions and a pandemic. Digital life alone has seen a massive change. Work life has changed. Everything we consider to be normal has changed. And nobody seems to trust the people in charge to tell them where they fit into the future.”
Saddest of all this – one of the great tragedies of our time – has been our most dangerous response to this tsunami of anxiety:
Opiates.
In 2022, “opioid overdose deaths reached a total of nearly 83,000!” This number included deaths from both opioids and cocaine. Overdose deaths have increased by more than eight times since 1999.
Opiate addiction is now being referred to as “America’s 50 state epidemic.”
Public health officials have described this epidemic as being “the worst drug crisis in American history. Deaths from heroin alone have surpassed gun homicides.” It has become a drug that can kill in doses smaller than a snowflake.
And then there’s Fentanyl. This is a drug that is 50 to 100 times more potent than any other drug!
As tragic as all this data is, there is no sign of it letting up.
But, in today’s gospel, in the midst of this horrific national calamity, we thankfully hear the refreshing voice of Jesus urging us, almost begging us, to remember to “not be afraid.”
This urging on Jesus’ part is not because he is naïve about the dangers that life can present, about the temptations to hide away in the world of drugs, about the pervasive atmosphere of anxiety in people’s lives.
Quite the contrary.
Even in the face of all the wildly rapid changes in our daily lives, all the worries about our jobs and our children and our politics and our health – amid all this and the horrors of these newly developed drugs, Jesus provides this calming reassurance:
“Do not be afraid …You are worth more than many sparrows.”
Because all that we fear, Jesus tells us, “cannot kill the soul.”
Jesus’ gospel message today is that we are loved; we are treasured; we are infinitely valued; we are more precious than we can ever imagine.
And then Jesus leads us a step further:
Don’t just keep this conviction to yourself, Jesus pleads with us. Shout it from the rooftops. Speak “in the light.”
Jesus reminds us passionately that the antidote to fear and anxiety is not heroin. It is not some other opiate or equally dangerous and life-threatening drug.
In today’s gospel, and repeatedly throughout his preaching and teaching, Jesus tells us that the true antidote to all this worry and fear is not to be found in any manufactured drug, but rather in a profound sense of trust – along with an assurance to “not be afraid; you are worth more than many sparrows… Everyone who acknowledges me before others I will acknowledge before my heavenly Father.”
How can we be confident of this? Because of what Jesus assures us of in another gospel account:
“You are my friends. Your name is written on the palm of my hand. You will never be forgotten. Don’t be intimidated by the bullies of this world. I’ll stand up for you before my Father in heaven. Place your trust in me.” (The Message: The Bible in Contemporary Language, Eugene Peterson)
“Do not be afraid.”
Ted Wolgamot, Psy.D.
