According to the Dictionary, Fear is “an unpleasant often strong emotion caused by anticipation or awareness of danger and accompanied by increased autonomic activity.”
According to psychology research, fear is a primal emotion that involves a universal biochemical response and a high individual emotional response. Fear alerts us to the presence of danger or the threat of harm, whether that danger is physical or psychological.
Sometimes fear stems from real threats, but it can also originate from imagined dangers. While fear is a natural response to some situations, it can also lead to distress and disruption when extreme or out of proportion to the actual threat.
Fear can also be a symptom of some mental health conditions, including panic disorder, social anxiety disorder, phobias, and post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD).
Fear is composed of two primary reactions to some type of perceived threat: biochemical and emotional.
At least 60 percent of adults admit to having at least one unreasonable fear, although research to date is not clear on why these fears manifest. One theory is that humans have a genetic predisposition to fear things that were a threat to our ancestors, such as snakes, spiders, heights, or water, but this is difficult to verify, although people who have a first-degree relative with a specific phobia appear more likely to have the same one. Others point to evidence that individuals fear certain things because of a previous traumatic experience with them, but that fails to explain the many fears without such origins.
Saint Ignatius of Loyola points out the that most constant work of the “Enemy” of the human person is to arouse fear of . . . something. Medical conditions such as anxiety and panic attacks, that literally threaten the life of the persons suffering from them, are significantly on the rise. The reality of climate change and its possible effects on the world, fear of shootings in our country, fear of war or fear of the neigh boring country, fear of illness, fear of abandonment, fear of failure.
Fear - That which leaves us sick to our stomachs, unable to breathe, bound up in nervous responses, and cowering in a physical or emotional hiding place. That primary work of the evil spirit which enslaves us to self-destructive behaviour and attitudes.
Of what are each one of us afraid? Ultimately, we may be afraid of death, but when I asked college students a few years ago they said their greatest fear was of rejection or brutality. Today’s Scripture invites us to prayerfully explore our fear and to recognize that chronic fear of any kind is a waste of time, energy, and life itself. We do not have to live in fear.
In Romans 8:12-17, St. Paul counsels the community in Rome (and therefore us as well) that they are children of the Creator God and have been rescued from slavery to fear of all kinds. We are the recipients of the freedom of God and NOTHING can happen to us that God will not help us handle. If we believe in a good and merciful God who really is in charge of the Kingdom, then whatever befalls us will bring us closer to God and the fullness of God’s Kingdom here on earth and in heaven. Through God’s love, furthermore, we are able to overcome the threats that cause fear for ourselves and others. We do not have to be slaves to chronic fear – in fact to be so is to reject God.
Luke 13:10-17 tells the story of Jesus being confident enough of God’s loving presence in his life that he recognizes that God has made him capable of relieving the fear of all who will listen to Him and choose His way of living his human condition. He knows as a human person, that God wants Him to liberate all of us from the slavery that binds us in the chains of fear. He speaks to a woman in the synagogue on the Sabbath to stand up straight – free from the chains of illness and fear that have kept her bent over for nearly two decades. She hears Him (the root of obedience) and is free to enjoy the goodness of her own body.
But the religious leaders are afraid of such freedom and chide Jesus for breaking a rule by which they are wilfully enslaved. They reject God’s message to the Jews (and to us their descendants) that the Sabbath is ultimately a celebration of freedom to be made whole and to help others become whole. If we are all whole then religious leaders don’t control us with the law, they serve us by helping us understand that the law is all about being genuinely free to love and thrive.
The month of November each year is a time when the Church challenges us to face the reality of death as passage into the fullness of life. On these days we are invited to stop and consider deeply what fear of death or of life does to us. By the waters of Baptism, we have the power of God to live fully as God intends us to. By your baptism you were freed from the slavery induced by fear. Ask God to stir up the Spirit of Adoption so that you too can cry “Abba” to our beloved Creator God.
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