12th Sunday in Ordinary Time (year A)

(Mt 10:26–33)

Matthew 10:26 Do not, therefore, be afraid of them; for there is nothing concealed that will not be revealed, nor anything secret that will not be made known. 

Matthew 10:27 What I tell you in the dark, speak in the light; and what you hear whispered, proclaim from the housetops.

Matthew 10:28 And do not be afraid of those who kill the body but cannot kill the soul; rather, fear him who has the power to destroy both soul and body in Gehenna.

If Jesus commands us not to be afraid, it means that fear is present. It is not merely the fear for my own life, but also the fear that good will fail; that good will always remain veiled, hidden, that people will not understand it—this too is the fear we have, as well as the fear that everything is in vain. Then there is the tragedy that if good fails, it is something truly grave: where is God? This is the disciples’ fear. A primary reason, in fact, that justifies the “do not be afraid” is that everything that now seems incomprehensible will be revealed: “there is nothing hidden that will not be revealed, nor any secret that will not be made known”. There is a veil, a concealment that will be removed and unveiled. Let us try to understand.

The great veil of God is the Cross. On the Cross He reveals Himself and makes Himself manifest as love, and just as it is in the life of Jesus so it will be in the life of the disciple: what appears to be defeat will in reality be revealed as victory. Everything is played out between the present and the future, between man’s today and God’s tomorrow. In other words, the obscure meaning of the present, in which man is called to live, finds its full understanding in the divine light of the Risen Jesus. Only this light is capable of illuminating humanity and revealing to it the hidden meaning of its history. Thus, all of history is nothing other than a progressive unveiling of the mystery of God.

Whilst verse 26 states a general principle upon which to base one’s lack of fear, verse 27 puts it into concrete practice. There is, in fact, a parallelism in the terms such that the former explain the latter: the ‘hidden’ finds its counterpart in ‘darkness’; the ‘revealed’ is reflected in ‘light’; the ‘secret’ is linked to ‘ear’; the ‘known’ is found in ‘roofs’. Furthermore, the verbs in verse 26, which are impersonal (“there is nothing”, “will not be revealed”, “will not be known”), become personal in verse 27 and have clearly defined subjects: I-you, Jesus-disciples. We thus move from the principle to its concrete realisation.

Jesus is instructing his disciples, speaking to them in private, in secret, away from the crowd—that is, not in public but in private. There is a contrast between the stage of proclamation in Jesus’s time, carried out discreetly, and the stage of the disciples’ preaching, in which they are required to proclaim the message of salvation courageously and publicly. The apostles are those to whom the secret is revealed. This secret and hidden teaching must not remain secret and hidden forever. It must be proclaimed to the whole world publicly, in a way that is audible and understandable to all. Jesus now speaks to them almost in silence. It will then be they who speak to the whole world, proclaiming his message, his Word, his teaching, after the Paschal event. Then, behold, what is in the darkness will be spoken in the light, and what is now merely whispered in private to a few people will reach everyone. So good is not defeated; do not fear. Do not be afraid; history is in God’s hands.

The whole conflict revolves around the confrontation between man and God, with whom the disciple must engage in the course of his mission. At the root of this confrontation lies the implicit question of whether it is better to obey God or men. This is the daily reality the disciples are faced with: they are called to proclaim and bear witness to truths that so annoy men that the latter do not hesitate to physically eliminate them. Jesus holds out to the disciples the possibility of a violent death, but urges them not to fear men who can at most deprive them of their physical life. They must rather fear God, who in judgement can condemn them to eternal damnation. It is worth enduring martyrdom to obtain eternal life in heaven.

We are terribly afraid of dying, and yet we die all the same. Our life is not the body; our life is the fact that we are children of God. This is the eternal life we already live now; it is this that we must not lose, for the other we will lose anyway, and those who try to save it by any means fail to do so. Therefore, let not the fear of death govern our lives. We must, instead, fear losing the meaning of our lives.

God is master of soul and body, of life and death. Therefore, let us fear Him. Today, when there is no longer any fear of God, people have endless phobias. Why? Because without the fear of God, death becomes the absolute thing to be avoided. If, on the other hand, we place the fear of God at the centre—that is, if we take into account that God is our Father, who has given us life—then our lives are transformed.

Gehenna, from the Hebrew ‘ghe-Hinnom’ (Valley of the River Hinnom), was a sort of precipice situated to the south-west of Jerusalem. In this valley, temples had once been erected to the god Moloch, to whom children were sacrificed according to Canaanite pagan rites, in which the Jews also participated. King Josiah (640–609 BC), in reforming and restoring the true worship of God, had these temples demolished and reduced the valley to a dumping ground for rubbish and corpses that could not be buried, where everything was burned. The fire here was therefore perpetual. Hence, by analogy, Gehenna came to represent the place of all impurity subjected to eternal fire, that is, Hell. This concept was taken up in the New Testament, where the term Gehenna denotes the place of eternal perdition and divine judgement.

 Argentino Quintavalle, author of the books 

- Apocalypse – an exegetical commentary 

- The Apostle Paul and the Judaizers – Law or Gospel?

Jesus Christ, true God and true Man in the mystery of the Trinity

The prophetic discourse of Jesus (Matthew 24–25)

All Generations Will Call Me Blessed

Catholics and Protestants Compared – In Defence of the Faith

The Church and Israel According to St Paul – Romans 9–11

(Available on Amazon)