Turn. Love. Repeat.
Even the hairs of your head have all been counted. Do not be afraid.
Luke 12:1-7 for Friday of the Twenty-Eighth Week in Ordinary Time
Five times in this Gospel reading, Christ spoke of fear or being afraid.
Twice out of the five, he told us NOT to fear.
THREE times he told us to BE afraid indeed.
In the middle of all this, he spoke of the one who has power to kill and also to cast into Gehenna (a Hebrew name for hell).
God alone has power, as we say in the Creed at Mass, to judge the living and the dead, and thus to cast into Gehenna.
But In the beginning, out of nothing, God cast matter into being, gave it form, life, a human soul, and thus created the human person.
God did it without need or obligation.
Creation unfolds from God’s freedom, power, goodness and love.
God’s love is why we exist and are alive.
That we can be killed and cast into hell is not so great as the mystery that God created us AT ALL— an unnecessary mystery of God’s freedom, power, goodness and love.
In today’s Gospel, Christ told of God caring to count one by one the hairs of our heads as if each hair were treasure.
God in his power, glory and endlessness brought us into being out of nothing.
He esteems, chooses and wants us as treasure.
Even the hairs of your head have all been counted. Do not be afraid.
This mystery of God’s almighty goodness and love calls us, invites us to believe, draws us out of the grip of fear and into thankfulness and wonder.
Wonder and thankfulness are the soul of worship and of holy lives.
Wonder and thankfulness are part of fulfillment and happiness.
Wonder and thankfulness fill the prayers through the Mass.
The wonder and thankfulness that Christ personally offers lovingly to his Father— these are the food and drink he gives us in his Body and Blood.
Turn. Love. Repeat.
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