Today’s second reading gives us just 4 verses from Philippians. The passage is very familiar: a wonderful one to take very slowly, reading it word by word as a prayerful lectio divina. Chewing over these words, we can draw life-giving nourishment from them, and inspiration, and encouragement, and consolation, and affirmation.
I’ve preached on this passage quite a few times before. For today, though, I was especially struck by the word “anxiety”. “Do not be anxious about anything”, says Paul. Well: there is a positive sort of anxiety which comes from responsibility, and love, and a realistic understanding of a situation. Paul himself feels this sort of anxiety for all the Churches (2 Cor 11:29), and in this very letter he commends Timothy for feeling it for the Philippians (2:20). But there’s another sort of anxiety that’s entirely negative, and which most certainly cannot come from God. This sort of anxiety can blight people’s lives. It’s the opposite of peace of heart: it obstructs joy, and prevents sleep. It can be a sort of living torment.
It seems to me that we live in an anxious age. Maybe this is because so much trust these days is broken; society as a whole seems to be broken. So for lots of people there’s a sense that everything is out of control, and likely to go horribly wrong: and there’s not a thing we can do to prevent it. So they live with anxiety.
Of course the reason St. Paul tells us not to be anxious – the reason we have no need to be anxious – is not because bad things won’t happen. No. Paul writes this from prison, daily or hourly waiting to hear whether - or when - they decide to cut his head off. No: the reason we Christians should not be anxious is because we can trust God: his love, his power, his goodness, his promise. We rest in God’s arms, as it were, all the time: like a baby asleep on its mother’s breast. But better even than that baby: our trust in God is wholly rational. In Christ Jesus God has proved his love for us to the end. Christ also has won the victory over sin, death and the devil, and he’s ceaselessly with us, and ever calls us to himself. So we bring to him in prayer all our concerns and all our troubles. We know he hears and answers. In him we have hope and joy, which are opposites of anxiety, and in him also we have cause for constant thanksgiving: also a good antidote to anxiety. So: many many times a day we can say “Jesus I trust in you”. And we know that the peace of Christ is a gift or a fruit of the Holy Spirit. So it’s something to which we have a claim. We should both ask for Christ’s peace in our heart, and come to possess it securely.
But I know lots of very good Christians who fervently believe all this, yet seem unable to shake off an almost crushing burden of anxiety. Maybe for some it could be a case of mental illness, which is to an extent treatable by the medical or psychological professionals. But plenty of people, not mentally ill as such, know perfectly well that anxiety never did anyone any good, or was ever helpful in any way; yet still they feel powerless to prevent it filling and dominating their minds. Such people need to know that the peace of Christ, and joy in the Spirit, can be paradoxical: maybe hidden from immediate sight, yet for all that radically possessed, and able at some level to be accessed and known.
As such, an analogy could be temptation. Our Lord himself was tempted by the devil. So many of the Saints endured years of persistent temptations, without ever sinning, because they never gave the temptation their consent. Some were tempted to lust or to anger or to hatred; some to blasphemy or atheism; some to despair; some to bitterness of heart or sadness. Against all that they prayed constantly, making very frequent acts of trust, faith, love, hope. Reading the biographies of Saints we often find that just before their death, or sometimes long before that, all of a sudden the temptation would be lifted, and they would be free. Then they would realise that this tormenting trouble of the mind, of which I suppose anxiety could be one example, was their way of suffering with Christ, and of winning the victory with him.
The supreme example of paradoxical peace of heart is Our Lord himself in his passion. To get a perfect image of absolute inner serenity and peace, we have only to read the final discourse of Jesus at the Last Supper, according to St. John. We know this attitude or habit of mind persisted through the Passion to the end, because of the words from the Cross. “Today you will be with me in paradise”. Yet also we know that the Passion of Jesus was utterly horrible, and he went to it with open eyes. In Gethsemani especially he experienced anguish, horror, revulsion, sorrow, grief, mental pain, to an unimaginably full degree. He looked then not just to bear all the physical pain that human wickedness and ingenuity could impose: he also knew he must bear all the sins of the world, committed from the beginning of time to its end; rolled up together and heaped upon his head.
We Christians who live in Christ certainly then have permission, as it were, to feel pain, to grieve, to experience anguish of heart. Yet through it all there is, there must be, “that peace of God that surpasses all understanding”. So if anxiety comes, we face it down; we name it as our enemy; if necessary we endure it, always asking and hoping it will be taken away. And all the time we remain turned, with ever more determination, towards God, towards Christ, towards our Mother Mary. We don’t forget our guardian angel either. And we know, we believe, that God has all things in his hands; in him all things work together for good, and all evil is turned eventually for our own good and his greater glory. However we may feel on the surface of our minds, in him we truly possess confidence, permanent joy, and that peace of which the world knows nothing.