Fear is the reason for all our sinful actions that harm our relationship with God and with others around us.

I am often conscious of not repeating the topics that I write and reflect about in my weekly blog posts, but I strongly believe that I need to make an exception this time.  I wrote something regarding fear last week, and it was when the coronavirus situation in Singapore was somewhat calmer and milder, with the response system condition (something our health ministry has formulated and named DORSCON to raise its citizens’ awareness toward a health emergency) at a yellow level.  

In a span of just one week, the yellow level has been stepped up to the next, which is orange.  At this stage, the disease that is plaguing the country is deemed severe and spreads easily from person to person, and the government wants its citizens to know that there will be moderate disruptions that are to be expected, with extra measures like quarantine and visitor restrictions put in place in hospitals.  

When this was made official news, it was no surprise that many in the country reacted with much fear and anxiety, resulting in a frenzied rush to clear grocery store shelves of their essential and even non-essential items.  I was rather bemused to see this happening so rapidly, and was rather amused in the way some locals were saying how when we moved to orange, that the people went bananas.

At the heart of all this craziness and insecurity is fear.  I’m not so much referring to the fear of not having enough food, personal and household supplies here, though this is the fear that is most evident.  At its very heart, it is the fear of death.  

It isn't as if the apocalypse is happening before our very eyes.  But wouldn’t it be so freeing and liberating to know that even if the apocalypse were to take place now and in this way, that there is still no need to fear and no cause to be anxious?  That would be like having some superpower that could overcome the worst enemy that we as human beings could ever have.  

In truth, we who are Catholics, baptized in the faith, have this superpower, but it is largely untapped and sadly, also left unknown and un-applied in our lives, especially when it is needed most. 

Just a cursory glance in the biblical accounts where God either appears to a human person or communicates directly to him through the angel of the Lord will reveal that in his omniscience, God knows that the first reaction that man has to something outside of the ordinary is that of fear.  The first words that open such encounters is almost always "be not afraid".  It reveals somehow that man's default reaction to things that are supernatural (which literally means above or beyond nature) is to be fearful.  Jesus comes to allay this in all of us, but he also wants us to cooperate by having faith in him.

In so many of his teachings, Jesus was trying to tell his listeners that because he is God, he is therefore the way out of all fears and anxieties in life, as well as the way to confront them.  He touched death and he went through death, and he wants us to do the same.  Following him as his disciple is going to be the best antidote for all of life’s worst panic situations.  Jesus was saying that once we are fully invested in him, living our lives like him and being loving as he is, then even though the world around us is riddled with fear, we are not.  But I don’t think this truth really sinks into the hearts and minds of Catholics who are baptized.  I am not surprised by this - partly because to really live with this kind of stellar confidence in life also requires one to be fully invested in one’s faith. While I’m not saying that all Catholics need to be fanatics, I am saying that the degree to which one is fully faithful and reliant on God’s grace and cooperating with it is the determinant factor in one’s confidence level in times like these.

In the many social media pictures and videos of Singaporeans hoarding essential items in their shopping carts and proudly displaying the contents of their storerooms in their homes looking like mini versions of grocery stores, I was really hoping and praying that these people are not baptized Christians who are practicing their faith.  It would be an embarrassment and almost pathetic if they are. And these videos that are making the rounds would be a clear testimony of how shallow their faith life really is. 

If they are not Christians, it shows we have our work cut out for us.  We know Christ and the kind of freedom that he alone is able to provide us in life and it behooves us to share this strength and power with them.  This is the core of evangelization.  

I fully understand why a non-Christian would resort to hoarding and being self-preserving and self-centered.  Who knows?  I might too, if I were a pagan and only lived my life for myself and made the world revolve around me and my needs if I was not a baptized child of God with him as my father and Jesus as my brother.  Being selfish and self-centered (hence, fearful) is after all, a very real part of our fallen sinful human nature that is somehow embedded in our DNA as human beings, thanks to that first fall of our first parents.  

In his inaugural address after taking the oath of office in 1933, US President Franklin D Roosevelt made a statement about fear which has since become immortalized.  He said that the only thing we have to fear is … fear itself.  While it may be true, once we are baptized in Christ, even this fear of fear itself is overcome.  

That, if you ask me, is truly a superpower.