“Do not let your hearts be troubled.” Those words of Jesus, in the Gospel, for many people, are precisely that, troubling. When you’re sharing your bad news; when you’re weighed down with fear and anxiety, when the depression is deep; when the evil behavior and attitudes of others are seemingly on the march where the wicked prosper, the greedy succeed, and the arrogant increase their power and influence… In the face of any of these things, when we’re reminded of Jesus’ words – “Do not let your hearts be troubled,” it can be troubling if we sense that those words are being, on some level, dismissive. That we’re being told to pretend things are okay when they’re not.
In America, we are experiencing a war. In the past 4 short months, 13 service men and women have been killed, over 380 wounded in Operation Epic Fury that results in humiliation, resentment, distrust, and a global economic crisis. So let me share this story about love and sacrifice.
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“Love requires sacrifice” is not a message we hear from popular culture these days. Our culture tells us that love should always feel good, and that when looking for love, we should “find someone who makes you happy.” The unspoken follow-up is if that person ever fails to make you happy, then love is gone, and you should move on to find the next someone to make you happy—a recipe for a series of disposable relationships and misery. St. Gianna Beretta Molla was an Italian saint who died in 1962, whose feast day we celebrate on April 28, was a pediatrician, wife, and mother. In 1954, she married Pietro Molla and they began their family. By 1961, they had two daughters and a son, and Gianna was pregnant with their fourth child. During this pregnancy, she developed a fibroma, a benign tumor, on her uterus. Doctors gave her the choice to have an abortion, have a complete hysterectomy, or remove only the fibroma. Gianna, determined to save her unborn baby’s life, chose to remove only the fibroma. Her daughter, Gianna Emanuela, was born healthy, but Gianna died from septic peritonitis a week later. Saving her daughter’s life cost her own. She was canonized by Pope St. John Paul II in 2004. St. Gianna’s husband Pietro wrote a biography of his late wife that was published in 1971, and many letters that St. Gianna wrote to him throughout their courtship and marriage have been published as well. From these writings we learn a little bit about the generous spirit with which she took on the challenges of daily life as a doctor, wife, and mother, and we can begin to understand the ways in which she embodied the connection between love and sacrifice. As she once said: “Love and sacrifice are closely linked, like the sun and the light. We cannot love without suffering, and we cannot suffer without love.”
The problem of so many men and women is that they hear what they want to hear as they continue to do what they want to do. They stop at the first sentence of “Do not let your heart be troubled” and forget the rest of what Jesus says “…have faith in God; have faith also in me.” Faith is meant to reshape and reorient our entire lives. They forget Jesus first spoke these words in the Upper Room on Holy Thursday as He gathers with His apostles for the Last Supper. He’s about to enter into the most troubling of circumstances – where humanity will finally succeed in killing God. |
We continue to struggle with troubling things, like war, threats of terrorism, sickness, death, and fear from being locked up in ICE detection center.
Lord, I pray for all my Sonshine Friends who live in fear of being deported, taken from their home and family. May they find strength and courage from the words of Jesus: “Do not let your hearts be troubled” and know that God indeed listens to our prayers simply have faith in Him.
