Finding a vaccine to overcome our fears

A virus is racing through the world, infecting thousands of people. The virus causes folks to anxiously check websites and listen to podcasts, soaking up every grim statistic. Symptoms include restlessness, depression and a sense of hopelessness.

The virus stalking us is fear, which is Satan’s oldest trick. We have so many fears — fear of failure, fear of illness, fear of heartbreak. We’re afraid people will laugh at us if we make a mistake. We’re afraid we’re not keeping up with the Joneses.

Our fears stalk us relentlessly, starting in childhood with whatever monster lives under the bed.

For years, I was terrified of flying. When I managed to get on a plane, I sat there, hands clenched, heart pounding, cringing at every bump. When the plane landed without crashing, I was amazed but deeply grateful.

I also was frightened of getting cancer, since my mother had died from it. Every mammogram was a major trauma, and waiting for the results was agonizing.

When the results came back positive for cancer, I began grappling with the terror of imminent death.

Even when the doctor said the prognosis was excellent, I still clung to fear.

The fear of losing my husband was a silent storm that battered my heart, even though he consistently got high grades at his annual physicals. The thought of living without him brought me to tears.

On the last vacation we took together, he went swimming with our nephew and was caught in a dangerous rip-tide. When he returned to the condo, drenched from the surf, he said, “You almost lost me today.”

His words were prescient, since he died of a heart attack three days later, while taking a walk. For the next few years, I had to face every possible fear that his presence had assuaged.

Fear of getting sick all alone, fear of someone breaking in during the night, fear of dying and no one finding me for days, fear of having a nervous breakdown — even the fear of harming myself in a desperate moment.

The gospel writer John wrote, “Perfect love casts out fear,” and since God is that perfect love, we are assured that he can heal a heart wounded by the virus of fear.

This was true for me, because God’s love came to me from a grief counselor, priests, friends and relatives, and kept me from succumbing to thoughts of suicide, which seemed an escape from suffering.

Often, when fear has us tied up in knots, we forget to turn to God. We forget to nurture ourselves with silence and prayer and the wonders of the natural world.

Our minds are adept at churning out worse-case scenarios, and sometimes neglecting the importance of hope. The apostle Paul was chained in prison for years, enduring great suffering, and still wrote letters to the early Christians that are steeped in hope.

When the disciples encountered a man possessed by demons, they weren’t able to cast out these dark forces. They told this to Jesus, who said, “This kind can only be cast out through prayer and fasting.”

I can attest that praying and attending Mass cast out the demons of fear after my husband’s death — and fasting from doomsday predictions about the pandemic has brought peace.

The psalm says, “My help is from the Lord, who made heaven and earth.”

Paul was able to endure beatings, chains and imprisonment, because his hope wasn’t pinned on earthly things, but on the one, unchanging source of love, which is God.

In the midst of suffering, he found a vaccine that overcomes fear. Let’s pray that in our personal struggles against turbulence and riptides, we too can be rescued by hope.