It seems an intrinsic part of the human condition that we are plagued by anxiety and fear. In today's commentary Dr Andrew Kania with help from some quite illustrious thinkers, both ancient and modern, examines this challenge that all humans are called upon to surmount. In what legitimate ways can we look to Jesus, and our faith, as the antidote to fear?

The only thing we have to fear is fear itself…

Franklin Delano Roosevelt

In what has become a frequently quoted modern maxim, Franklin Delano Roosevelt, at his Presidential inauguration in 1933 declared to a nation under the yoke of great economic distress "that the only thing we have to fear is fear itself". Whereas the first part of this sentence is often quoted as a motivational tool, the completion of Roosevelt's sentence, often deleted, should not be forgotten: "nameless, unreasoning, unjustified terror which paralyses".

Clearly Roosevelt wanted his audience to shrug all fears which were unjustified and unreasonable, but he was not so presumptuous as to demand that we be reckless in the face of real danger, reckless with our own lives, or as to the welfare of others in our care. Roosevelt's message was that there are real reasons to be fearful, but we should not make fear the master of our destiny. If we do so, fear wins by constantly narrowing the expanse of our dreams. With regard fear, we need to be prudent, but not slavish. Herman Melville taught something quite similar in his classic novel, Moby Dick (1851), when he told his reader, "that the most reliable and useful courage was that which arises from the fair estimation of the encountered peril … an utterly fearless man is a far more dangerous comrade than a coward". (Melville, 1988, p. 135)

Fear and anxiety are real elements of the human condition, and being endemic to our nature, can and do spread rapidly through communities of people. St. Mark the Evangelist provides us with an example of such an event. The apostles travelling across the sea of Galilee are caught in a windstorm, and fearing for their lives rush to wake the sleeping Christ. Christ's retort offers us a glimpse at one way to allay our fears: "Peace! Be still!" Then the wind ceased, and there was a dead calm. He said to them, 'Why are you afraid? Have you still no faith?'" (Mark 4: 39-40). In essence Christ calls for us to trust in the Providence of God, to firmly believe that there is a purpose to our lives and for those events which occur within them. Christ does not wish us to suffer, but merely desires us to understand that even if He seems to us to be asleep He is constantly and attentively near us, a God sharing our self-same barque as it journeys across the perilous deep. The storm may rage around us, and at other times the winds may be still, but irrespective of the speed of the wind — be it torrential or a gentle breeze, God is there. "Why are you afraid?" He asks of us. Why? For indeed we are human, as Christ understood, and suffer from insecurities within us.

Deliver us, Lord, from every evil, and grant us peace in our day…

Icon of the Anastatsis or "Harrowing of Hell," in which Christ descended into hell and rescued Adam and Eve, and the Old Testament patriarchs, from death. He is shown in triumphal glory, seizing the hands of Adam and Eve, our forebears, and raising them from their coffins, from the darkness of death.

The Liturgy of the Catholic Church according to the Roman Rite provides the following beautiful passage: "Deliver us, Lord, from every evil, and grant us peace in our day. In your mercy keep us free from sin and protect us from all anxiety". This prayer, following the recitation of the Lord's Prayer, recaptures the message of the scene from St. Mark's Gospel, "protect us from all anxiety", and let us know that in everything, You are there. A wonderful image exists in the Catholic Church's Byzantine Rite, that of the resurrected Christ, holding the hands of Adam and Eve, leading each out of their tombs. The iconographer conveys the image of serenity as Christ rescues our parents from their corruption. There is in this scene a sense of Eve's and Adam's awareness of who this man is, and His capability not only to bring back to life, but also to free them from the bonds of sin, fear and anxiety. There is in the eyes of Christ, a power of one who has not only felt suffering, but one who has conquered all that suffering can mete out. We have an image of the experienced sailor taking the neophytes safely to shore, the God who became man to conquer the finality of death.

The example of Thomas More…

A number of other illustrations can be used to highlight the power of faith to conquer fear. Within the Latin Church, there is the exceptional figure of Thomas More, scholar, diplomat, author of Utopia, Chancellor of Oxford and Cambridge universities, pioneer of women's education, wit, Chancellor of England, and martyr. A man acquainted with wealth and high office, More was stripped of all the material trappings this life offers, only to reveal the more brightly to history that that which makes one "real" is the essence of the person created by God and not that sculptured by human hands – the spirit within. In a final letter to his eldest daughter Margaret, More consoled her powerfully: "do not let you mind be troubled over anything that shall happen to me in this world. Nothing can come but what God wills. And I am very sure that whatever that be … it shall indeed be the best". More is neither complacent, reckless, nor defeated, only reconciled that after all is said and done in this life — God's will shall be done, and as St Paul reminds us, "If God is for us, who is against us?" (Romans 8: 31). God is not the grand vivesectionist, He does not will evil, but He is more than willing to lead us through the fears we may be faced with in life. More conquered fear and great injustice by concentrating his entire will on God, thus he was able to leave this world courageously, leaving fear behind, and in words later recalled by his son-in-law: "He then begged them earnestly to pray for the King, that it might please God to give him good counsel, protesting that he died the King's good servant, but God's first".

Faith in God as the antidote for fear is not a novel elixir, but rather an ancient cure, for a chronic human concern. We see in the writings of the Eastern Father of the Church, St. Ignatius of Antioch in a letter to Polycarp the declaration that he seeks to be "resting without anxiety in God", and the famed Latin Father of the Church, St. Augustine of Hippo, also described in his Confessions, that our hearts are restless until they are calmed by resting in God. God is our closest friend, for He is the only friend who is constantly with us.

To illustrate this final point another hero of the Catholic Church can be selected out of history. Iosyf Cardinal Slipyj, was the last surviving Ukrainian Catholic hierarch after the Soviet purgings. Immortalised in the novel The Shoes of the Fisherman, by the Australian, Morris West, Slipyj endured 17 years of slave labour in a Siberian salt mine in defence of the Catholic faith. Tortured and brutalised he had both seen and heard of the deaths of his brother bishops (including that of Hryhorij Lakota, whose surname, incidentally, Morris West gave to the central character of his novel). He endured all these trials, believing himself to be all but forgotten in an isolated outpost of the Iron Curtain. His spirit endured even though the flesh became increasingly weaker. Only through the direct efforts of Pope John XXIII and President John F. Kennedy, was his release negotiated. Slipyj had been spurred on by the prayers of his predecessor Metroplitan Andrii Sheptyts'kyi, who on his deathbed declared to those around him: "Our Church will be ruined … but you will hold on, do not renounce the faith, the Catholic Church. A difficult trial will fall on our Church, but it is passing. It is only necessary to pray that the Lord God and the Mother of God will care for our poor tired people".

Fear comes in a variety of forms, according to the silent concerns held within the heart of each individual. Perhaps Martin Luther King Jr. encapsulates the antidote for fear in his short chapter of the same name in Strength to Love. Musing on his own struggles with anxiety and a paralysing fear of violence being committed to him personally, King Jr. describes how his own ministry began to be visibly affected by a lack of confidence, and a lack of certitude to the cause of social justice. His antidote to reignite his vocation was the selfsame which is offered to each of us. In King Jr's concluding words: "Fear knocked at the door. Faith answered. There was no one there".

Image Credits:
Clicking on the images in the body of the article will take you to the original source.

©2008 Dr Andrew Thomas Kania

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