Homily: June 1, 2024, Saturday of the Eight week in Ordinary time.

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 “"But shall we say, 'of human origin'?" - they feared the crowd, for they all thought John really was a prophet.’

One of the gifts of the Holy Spirit is ‘Fear of God’.

Our God is a loving Father, and we are His beloved children, so should we live in fear of Him?

No, we should not. Then what is this gift about?

It is a respectful fear and deep reverence. It is a heightened awareness that “my heavenly Father watches over me and sees everything that I do.” It is also the deliberate and intentional acceptance of and surrender to God’s will, His authority, His power over our life. It is living in mindfulness of the Final Judgment of God at the end of time, which is a judgement of love.

You can thus imagine having this gift of ‘fear of God’ in our lives, we will be able to live truly free from sin and in steady progression towards holiness.

Without this gift, we would be living in fear of other material obsession or other persons, in the sense of worshipping them and giving them top priority and attention. We would live in slavery to material and worldly pursuits, which can never satisfy, never sanctify.

We see the Pharisees in today’s Gospel who lived in fear, not of God, but of the people. They were afraid of losing their authority, influence and power over their people. They had authority over them, but at the same time, they were afraid of them because they needed the people to come under their authority. They know if the people were to give up following them, or worse, to revolt against them, their authority would be useless and powerless. They fail to see that their status was given by God, they fail to live in fear of the Lord.

In contrast, let us look at Jesus; He accepted His Father’s will and lived in full obedience to Him. He was always mindful that His purpose and mission was to serve the will of God, for the salvation of the people. This made Him totally free from the world, He lived only to please God.

What do you live for?

Those who have the fear of God live for God, with a life in obedience to God’s way and will, that which leads them to true freedom, redeemed from sin and death. Amen.


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