Supernatural fear

In today's Gospel (Luke 1:5-25), we have the familiar account of Zacharias, Elisabeth and the birth of John the Baptist.

A dramatic moment comes when Zacharias, a priest and therefore a professional man of religion, is doing his job for the Lord and then something totally unexpected occurs.

And there appeared unto him
an angel of the Lord
standing on the right side of the altar of incense.

And when Zacharias saw him,
he was troubled,
and fear fell upon him.

Even though he was a priest, dedicated to the service of the Lord, Zacharias reacted with fear to an angel of the Lord.

It was only natural.

You and I may be people of faith, with our hearts set on the things of heaven, but we walk every day in the natural world. Of necessity we are accustomed to the natural environment as well as the structures crafted by man. We come to rely upon the firm-set earth and in the mundane regularity of nature and of the human world.

But then something happens: something that comes from outside, that breaks through the what we thought was harmony of nature and that shatters the illusion of human dominion in which we have made ourselves comfortable.

We have seen a bit of this in the devastation of hurricanes and tsunamis. Sooner or later we are liable to see it on an even larger scale: one of the many disasters that have literally shaken the globe and that inevitably will return again.

And then there is also the devastation that can be wrought by evil men, multiplied astronomically by the technology of terror, war, and toxic waste.

It is only natural to be afraid when the bubble of our human existence is broken, when we realize that the world is more than we know.

That is what Zacharias felt, even aside from the popular wisdom that such visions presaged doom: the familiar world had been broken into and everything would now be very different.

This will happen to us too: one way or another, the commonplace world in which we have lived our lives will be shattered.

May God have mercy on us.

Perhaps it will be a disaster. Perhaps it will be a death close at hand. Perhaps it will be the change of a job or perhaps the collapse of one's health.

Perhaps it may even be an angel of the Lord appearing before our waking eyes.

Whatever may happen, it will be our relationship with the Lord that will see us through.

If the Lord is our rock, then we need not fear anything that may happen to us, for the Lord will always be there: at every moment of our lives and in every wonderful moment of eternity.

As you and I continue the steady march of our everyday lives, walking upon the well worn paths of our comfortably familiar world, we need to remember always to keep reaching out in prayer to the Lord, for our familiar world will some day be broken and all our paths may fall into darkness, but our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ will always be there and will say to us:

Fear not...
for thy prayer is heard