Homily: July 24, 2023, Monday of the Sixteenth Week in Ordinary Time (Be still)

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 “The LORD himself will fight for you; you have only to keep still.”

Recently I went off a few days with my older cousin priest to Wisconsin. We stayed over a beautiful lake house at Luck, WI. 

Our host Russ told us not to go outside at night because he recently spotted a bear a few times near his house. I wondered then what I should do if a big bear ever attacks me. What would you do?

What would you do?

Some people advised that when a bear attacks, play dead. According to Stephen Herrero, a bear expert, playing dead makes the bear think you are not a threat and so it may back off. Thus saves the day, and your life!

But truly, it is easier said than done. When we come face to face with danger, when we meet with an emergency, something we think is beyond our strength to handle, many of us would panic. We would lose our sense of logic, we lose our cool, we start to do things which might just make the situation worse, we say things which might backfire.

And here in the first reading, we see the Israelites, having escaped from Egypt but were not totally free from danger. The Egyptian army were coming after them real fast and fierce! In that panic and fear, they began to blame Moses and God for delivering them from slavery.

And Moses told them the wisest and supposedly easiest thing to do, “The Lord himself will fight for you; you have only to keep still.”

Isn’t that easy?

But somehow, keeping still and doing nothing is so difficult for many of us, because we lack faith. If we have enough faith and believe that God will do the fighting for us and He will surely win, then we should be able to relax and keep still, wait for His next instructions, and then move accordingly.

When we panic and lose faith, our fears increase and we panic more, we might just make the wrong move.

I know it is not easy, I too am still learning. But let us believe and have faith. Let us remember these words in our hearts and recall them when we come face to face with the grizzly bears in our life again, “The Lord himself will fight for you; you have only to keep still.” Amen.


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