NO NEED TO BE ANXIOUS

Have no anxiety at all. 

Let the peace that God gives guard your hearts and minds.

Philippians 4

Saint Paul must be kidding! No anxiety at all? With an international pandemic, street demonstrations, toxic political unrest, rampant unemployment, a worrisome national debt, election intrusions, cancer and the funerals of fellow citizens, relatives and friends, how can Saint Paul’s words possibly fit those of us living in today’s Church and world? How can we possibly remain anxiety-free in the middle of all these situations? 

“Anxiety” is a state of intense, often disabling apprehension, uncertainty, and fear caused by the anticipation of something threatening. It is often not so much about what is happening or even what has happened, but about what might happen next.

Have no anxiety at all. Let the peace that God gives, guard your hearts and mind.

My dear mother comes to mind when I think of anxiety. It seems that she always had a thin stream of anxiety trickling through her veins. Even though she has been dead for forty-five years now, I can still see her in my mind’s eye picking at her lower lip, a nervous habit that always accompanied intense moments of anxiety. I can still remember one time when we laughed at her for being so anxious. She snapped back, “Well, somebody around here needs to worry!” Looking back, she had a lot to be anxious about: seven kids, a demanding husband and breast cancer, to name a few! 

When I was about to be ordained, anxiety was very much on my mind. The church was undergoing a great upheaval and priests were beginning to leave in significant numbers, Martin Luther King Jr and Bobby Kennedy had been killed a couple of years earlier, the Vietnam War was raging along with street riots. I asked myself many times, in that year leading up to ordination, “How am I going to keep my cool in a fast-changing church and in a world coming unglued? How will I be able to stay focused when one problem after another is going to be hurled into my face from both inside and outside the church? How will I be able to calm others when I seem to be torn up all the time myself?”

I have spent my life as a priest searching for an inmost calm that no storm can shake. When I discovered and admitted to myself that I cannot control what happens “out there,” I knew I had to find a way to control my reaction to what happens “out there.” As one spiritual teacher said, “It is easier to put on slippers than it is to carpet the world.” I knew I was going to need, and certainly wanted to have, the peace that only a close relationship with Jesus could give me, that peace that Saint Paul invites us to embrace in our second reading today.

Have no anxiety at all. Let the peace that God gives, guard your hearts and minds.

I spent most of my young adult life looking for an inmost calm that no storm could shake, an inner peace that would remain rock solid no matter what! I am happy to say that I have found it, but now I have to work to keep it. Sometimes I panic and forget, but I always come back to it sooner or later. Once I discovered that a peaceful center is always available to me, even in the midst of storms, I know I can always come back to it.

How can one have that peace? It comes from a close relationship with Jesus. If you truly believe that you are loved without condition, that God is on your side and holds no grudges, that in the end things are going to turn out OK because God has promised us so, then a great peace will come over you. With that knowledge, you will know that no matter how bad things get sometimes, no matter how much you have to handle, no matter how great your losses, you will know in your heart of hearts that you are in good hands because you are in God’s hands. When you know these things to be true, a great peace begins to stand guard over your heart and mind! That is what St. Paul is talking about today when he tells us to “let the peace that God gives stand guard over your hearts and minds.”

Once I begin to live in the knowledge that, in spite of it all, things will ultimately be OK, I begin to realize that many of my life’s greatest blessings have come out of what long ago seemed like an unbearable disaster.  Looking back at the times in my life when God seemed absent, at the times when I was overwhelmed with anxiety, worry and panic, in hindsight I can see that the hand of God was actually bringing me to where I needed to go and teaching me what I needed to learn. Most of the things I have most worried about never happened! Most of my imagined tragedies have actually contained great blessings! For me, it has happened too many times to dismiss as a fluke. 

Peace, however, is not a time when there are no problems. Peace is a calm state of mind in the midst of problems and in spite of problems. Peace is a trusting state of mind that comes from a close relationship with Jesus whose name is Emmanuel, meaning “God is with us. 

My fellow believers, we cannot control most of what is going to happen, so let us finish each day and be done with it. Let us do our best and let go of it. Let us not anticipate trouble or worry about what may never happen.  Our fretting anxiety has no power to affect tomorrow, but it can certainly ruin today.  Let us thank God for how far we have come and trust God with how far we can go.  This peace of mind is Jesus’ last gift to us. No matter what we are going through, let us lean on His everlasting arm, accepting his gift of peace and learning to live out of it. “Anxiety is the rust of life, destroying its brightness and weakening its power. A childlike and abiding trust in Providence is its best preventive and remedy.” (Tyron Edwards) As soon as true trust in God begins, our anxiety begins to fade. We will never be problem free, but we can be free of anxiety and needless worry! 

On this Feast of Saint Francis of Assisi, it is appropriate to end with his famous prayer!

 

Peace Prayer of Saint Francis

 

Lord, make me an instrument of your peace:
where there is hatred, let me sow love;
where there is injury, pardon;
where there is doubt, faith;
where there is despair, hope;
where there is darkness, light;
where there is sadness, joy.

O divine Master, grant that I may not so much seek
to be consoled as to console,
to be understood as to understand,
to be loved as to love.
For it is in giving that we receive,
it is in pardoning that we are pardoned,
and it is in dying that we are born to eternal life.
Amen.