Living fearlessly is something that many people would like to do, but very few ever really do so in life. I recall having read about a daredevil stuntman who called himself Evel Knievel in my younger days, when he would thrill crowds who would gather at events where as a stunt performer, performing astounding airborne stunts on his motorcycle like leaping over a row of parked cars. His real name wasn’t Evel, but Robert Craig Knievel. He gave himself the name Evel because it sounded like Evil, and it brought a certain mystique associated with his death-defying stunts.
Stuntmen and daredevil personalities give the impression that they are fearless. But I do wonder if they, or any human person really can live without fear. Even Jesus, we are told by scripture, sweated blood in the garden of Gethsamane in the face of his impending crucifixion, and prayed that if it were possible, that the hour might pass from him. He was, after all, fully human and fully divine, and fear was part of his humanity.
I don’t think it is possible to live without any fear of anything, and it may not be healthy at all, because there needs to be a healthy fear in life in order to live safely. Just think about how much danger we will be putting ourselves in if we have no fear of what boiling water would do to our hands. There is a rare disorder in which a person cannot feel pain, and when one has this disorder, one is constantly in danger of hurting himself unless one is constantly guarding himself against accidents that may hurt or maim him.
The world as of late has been gripped by fear and anxiety, due largely to the outbreak of the coronavirus which appears to have originated from Wuhan, China. There is no telling how bad it can get, and day by day the numbers of those infected and those who have succumbed to this virulent strain of the influenza are increasing. There is a foreboding sense of fear, unease and anxiety that is slowly creeping across the globe. Can one be fearless in the face of this public health emergency situation, which could turn into a pandemic?
The greatest fear that can plague any human being has to be the ultimate fear of death. For most of humankind, it is death that separates what is known from the truly unknown. But for the Christian, the unknown has become known, in and through the person of Jesus Christ. The great and truly groundbreaking event of the resurrection has given us Christians the consummate confidence to face death, and anything that can lead to it, coronavirus notwithstanding.
No matter what stringent protocols a government or health organization can put in place in countries that are facing such threats, the one thing that undermines it all is going to be panic and hysteria. Confidence and calm, which are antithetical to panic and hysteria, come ultimately from living as free from fear as possible. Don’t we as Catholics at every Mass pray the embolism after the Lord’s Prayer where we hear the celebrant pray that we will be “free from sin and safe from all distress”? No words in the Liturgy are there for no good reason. Every word has deep significance and meaning for our faith and for our lives.
Even if fear is a real thing that we may be experiencing right now, there is good reason for us to be calm and collected, especially if we are in a state of grace, and thus “free from sin”. Living in this state is our greatest guarantee that even if our lives are being threatened, that it is truly ok. It is what gave the heroic martyrs of our faith the courage to go through their last act of sacrifice and to look forward to the promise of life eternal after that.
Evel Knievel may have shown external courage by leaping over however many cars that he did in those stunt shows. The promise of the resurrection gives us the ability to leap over all that life can throw at us, and that includes a life-threatening illness.
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