Mt. 10: 26-33
All the followers of Christ are endowed with a mission to proclaim the Good News to the ends of the earth and to all creatures. In today’s gospel, Jesus exhorts his disciple: “What I say to you in the dark, tell in the light; and what you hear whispered, proclaim from the housetops.” (Mt.10: 27) However, the reality is that this proclamation of the Good News had to encounter various challenges from the beginning and in all the ages. It began with Jewish authorities followed by the Roman emperors, authorities in different parts of the world, and even today Christian communities undergo persecution. These difficulties remained as a hindrance to the mission entrusted by Jesus to his disciples. Anyhow this scenario is not an excuse for the disciples to withdraw themselves from the mission of making Jesus known.
The instinct to preserve one’s own life from danger is common in all of us. However, Jesus asks to come out of this fear with our ardent faith in our Heavenly Father who cares for us without fail. Jesus uses the analogy of sparrows and hairs on our head. These things are insignificant to us. None of us bother about the sparrows that we see in nature. We are not sure neither of their number nor their sustenance. The fact is that these insignificant birds are significant for our Heavenly Father and He cares all these creatures through his unfailing providence. Anyhow, human beings are considered as the crown of creation. We are never bothered about the number of hairs that we have on our heads. Yet, our heavenly Father who cares the sparrows even knows the number of hair on our head. These words of Jesus reveal the depth of caring love that God has for each one of us. Not even a single hair falls from our head without his knowledge. He is our Creator. Nothing happens to us by chance, God has a plan behind everything. This is the assurance that Jesus gives us to overcome our fear. When we see things only from our perspectives, taking into consideration only our strength and weakness we will succumb to fear and remain frightful to proclaim Jesus in public.
Today Jesus challenges us to be his witness whatever be the circumstances that we are. In order to have momentary gains at times, we hide our identity as Christians or ready to deny the fact that we are Christians. We need to respect the religious freedom of others. At the same time, we have no excuse from not proclaiming the Good News of Jesus wherever we are. In certain countries rules are prohibiting public; at least our way of life should be a proclamation of Jesus. The charity of Christ should urge us to transform our surroundings by living his gospel in a concrete manner. Let us constantly reminds ourselves about the caring love of our heavenly Father and let us be grateful to him by being making His name known…