Being Afraid of God
by Fr. Mariusz
I have been a priest now for six years and I must say I am astonished at how many people I discover in my pastoral work that are afraid of God.
Many go to church, pray, and take part in religious practice, not because they really believe in God, but because they fear that if there is a God, He may punish them, either in this life or the next. So their worship is not for love of God and all that He has given them, but because of fear and their faith is more like an insurance policy.
I have come to the conclusion lately that, if they practice out of fear, then they must have a semblance of belief, which they should demonstrate in a search for real belief. They cannot just sit on a fence. St. Augustine said those who are searching for God have already found Him. If you are searching for God, who is love and mercy itself, He will find you.
The Feast of Jesus Christ, King of the Universe and the beginning of the Advent, reminds us that God became flesh, and came down to live among us so that we could identify with Him and get to know Him. God, who is the King of Universe, wants also to be King of our hearts.
He tries in many different ways to come into our broken lives and wounded hearts. The greatest evidence of how much He wants to identify with our suffering in this life is His Cross, on which He let Himself be tortured and His heart be split open with a lance, to show His heart is broken too for love of us.
In this way also He begs mercy from the Father for our brokenness, showing Him how much He cares for us. In this way, He is saying to each of us. ‘Do not be afraid of your brokenness; you do not have to run from the truth of who you are. I came into this world not to condemn you, but to set you free’.
In front of this truth of the fullness of God’s love for us, we have two possibilities – we can keep blaming God for what has been happening in our lives, as one of the crucified men did, or we can recognise, that without God, without His Mercy, we would not be able to handle our lives at all, or to find the interior depth to our existence, as the second of the crucified did.
At every Holy Mass, there is a moment in which we are under the cross with Our Lady, St. John and St. Mary Magdalene. We look at the dying Jesus, free to open our hearts to the Mercy which flows out from His pierced heart or to remain closed into ourselves.
If you really want Jesus to transform your heart and make you free from your own limitations, next time you participate in the Eucharist, during the Consecration, look at Jesus hidden in the piece of bread and tell Him, in your heart, that you want Him to be the Lord of your life, to live in you and to transform you as He wants. Then you will see Divine Mercy in action.