We called him "Big Jim" - our Latin teacher in freshman year of high school. Big Jim Burn, because he was a very tall priest (about 6'5") and HE TALKED LIKE THIS (big, deep voice), and I was very scared of him. But we all called him, "Here comes Big Jim!" And in freshman year high school Latin, he came in and he sat down (you always stood up, but on this day he sat down) and he boomed out, "Noli metuere. Noli metuere." Latin. Now I was failing algebra, but I was good at Latin. And he said, "Does anyone know what that means - noli metuere?" Dead silence. (Gestures - raises hand slowly.) "Yeah?" "I think it means, 'Don't be afraid.'" "Right! Don't let anyone intimidate you!" (Scared face!) That's absolutely a true story.

Now our Lord starts off today's Gospel by saying "noli metuere - fear no one." Other translations are, "be not afraid." A more explicit etymological translation is "don't let anybody intimidate you." Fear no one. OK, today I'd like to think about three different things with your help - three different things the Lord talks about in the Gospel. But, the general idea is, noli metuere - from the mouth of Jesus.

Now sometimes our Lord says something, and we go, "uh huh." Fear no one - uh huh. A kind of a M.E.G.O. settles over our souls - My Eyes Glaze Over. We love Jesus, we respect Him, but sometimes he says things that, "uh huh - fear nobody, yeah." But our Lord gets very specific - don't let anybody intimidate you, my apostles - my friends.

First would be the "sneerers and the jeerers" at your faith. When I was kid I used to visualize myself being a priest later on and standing at the altar and all of sudden into the Church burst a bunch of Communists with machine guns, and they yell at me, "Deny Jesus!" And I say, "No!" And they shoot me! (Laughter!) Noli metuere. You don't, and I don't, have to face that kind of thing but we do have to face, especially recently, sneerers and jeerers at us Catholics. So, couple of examples for each of the three things. Couple of examples of sneerers and jeerers at your being with Christ.

OK. The first is Albert Camus. Camus was a French novelist, an existentialist agnostic. He didn't know if believed in anything! Camus once went to North Africa to study leper colonies, among other things, so he could write the novel later entitled, "The Plague." And while he was there he came across a leper colony that was run by Dominican nuns, and he recognized one of the nuns - her name was Solange - when she was a debutante in Paris. And he recognized her, and she was wrapping the sores of a leper. And he leaned over, and he said, "Solange, I wouldn't do what you're doing for a hundred million francs." And the young Dominican nun looked up at Camus, and she said, "Albert, neither would I."

So he got back to Paris, and he and Satre (John Paul Satre) - now Satre was an atheist Communist, and Satre intimidated everybody, and even Camus was a little intimidated by Satre - but they were sitting having a drink or something on the Champs Elysees, and Camus told him that story. And Satre said, "Well, what did she mean, 'Neither would I?'" And Camus said, "I think the nun meant that she wouldn't do it for any amount of money, that she was doing it for Christ." And Satre put down his drink, and he said, "She must have been insane!" And Camus got up, and my French is weak, but he said something like, "Jean Paul, avec tois, je suis fatigue," which roughly translated means, "John Paul, you make me tired." And I told that once to a college kid, and the college said, "Wow! Imagine telling off Jean Paul Satre!" Sometimes the jeerers and the sneerers have to be gently told, "I'm with Christ, you make me tired." You're not defending this or that individual in the Church - you are with Christ.

And the second came, a phone call this week on Thursday from a former student who now works at the UN, and she's getting married. And she was telling co-workers at the lunch at the UN that she was getting married at St. Rose's Church, let's say. And everyone around the table said, "You're getting married in the Catholic Church, nowadays?" Now, she's not terribly heroic she admits, but she said quietly, "Yeah, I was to get married before Jesus Christ in my Church." Noli metuere - our Lord is very clear in the Gospel - it's out of his mouth - if you acknowledge Me, I'll be right with you when you face My Father after death. And if you deny me and weasel out, I'll deny you. Christ, not this or that person in the Church. Then He goes on (our Lord, He says so much in the Gospel!), but he goes on and says, "Don't be afraid of people but you should be afraid of Hell!" Now our Lord is not embarrassed or ashamed to bribe us with the promise of eternal happiness in Heaven! He often talks about it - hang on, there's heaven! And he's not afraid to scare the hell out of us, theologically. When he says, "You should be afraid of the one who could plunge your body and soul into Gehenna, they all knew what He meant. Gehenna was the name of a garbage dump right outside of the city. And fire was burning day and night, day and night in Gehenna because that's where they burn the garbage. So they got the point!

Now, we know it's not literal fire, but I once caught a glimpse of what He meant. Now this is a summer re-run, I know I told you this the first year I came here. But, I caught a glimpse of fire forty-two years ago as a young priest. A young lady came in, she used to come in every week to talk about the Church because she was in love with a boy who went to a Catholic college. Let's say he went to Notre Dame and she went to Vassar. But she was playing games with this guy - now I hope this doesn't go on anymore, but because it's as if she was reading some dumb book, "How To Hold On To Your Man" or something. They were both seniors, and when he would call from Notre Dame to talk to her (they were in love, they were planning marriage after graduation), she would tell her girlfriends at the dorm, "Tell him I'm at that dance at Princeton!" Another time she'd say, "Say that you saw me going out with that boy from Brown!" Some kind of game she was playing to keep him on his toes, so he wouldn't take her for granted. Well, this went on for almost half a year, and finally he called up and said, "I can't stand these cruel, high school games you're playing. I love you. I thought you loved me! I found out a couple of times you were lying, trying to keep me jealous" - I'm rushing this, but finally he said, "I can't suffer this way anymore." And he broke up. And she arrived in the rectory that afternoon. It was February, cold, upstate New York, and she was hugging her fur coat and she said, "I'm in hell!" She's doing this (touching face), "I'm in hell! I'm burning up!" And I said, "What do you mean?" She said, "I'm burning up! I'm in hell and I put myself there! I put myself there!" And I thought, "That's what our Lord means, that's what hell is - you put yourself there, you lost love forever."

Hell, we know, should not be constantly on our minds, but I think it was wise for our Lord to give us that scare. "Don't lose me forever," he's saying. There's a man I know (I always ask him permission to tell this), he's now in his 40s and has two grown sons, but when he was young (back in New York), he was a cocaine addict. (Interesting people this priest knows - does he know anyone rational?) He was a cocaine addict, and he was skunked out of his skull on crack or cocaine, and he used to pack a gun. And he went into a liquor store many years ago with the gun! And the guy behind the counter wasn't going to give him the money, and the man told me, years later, that he was packing a gun, and he said, "I was going to kill him I was so stoned and mad, but I remembered the nuns in Catholic grammar school telling us that if you did something really bad you'd go to hell." He said, "That stopped me." Good! He's the first one that's been that honest with me, "That stopped me."

Our Lord's not afraid to scare us but He doesn't want us to stay scared because in today's Gospel, he says (at the end) "If you stay by Me, if you acknowledge Me, stay by Christ, defend Him, don't be intimidated, hang onto Jesus, I will stand by you when you face My Father after death." Noli metuere.

And the last is, he says to the Apostles, "You're worth more than a flock of sparrows. Stop cutting yourself down." Now, I'm awfully sick of the phrase, "I have low self-esteem," but I guess they did! Because he gives the example of a couple of sparrows sold for a couple of coins. Sparrows, to a Jewish audience, were the meanest, mangiest things you could buy on the market. When you went into the temple, you could bring two sheep or two turtledoves, and if you were really broke you brought a couple of sparrows. So he uses that as an example. The cheapest little thing you can get, and he says, "Your Father, if one sparrow falls out of heaven, your Father knows about it." This is Jesus, not some little fairytale out of Hans Christian Andersen. You're worth more, He says (I can't imagine our Lord not grinning to these guys), "You're worth more than a flock of sparrows!"

OK, I'm going to shut up for a minute. I want you to think, it's between you and our Lord, of one good thing that's happened on this Earth because of you. No matter how small. One good thing that you said or did, no matter how small, that would not have happened if you had never been born on this planet. (Silence.) OK. Our Lord says no matter how weak we are, and how many times we've messed up, if we cling to Him, he'll keep using us to do some good, and he'll defend us before his Father in heaven.

Now this is the last thing. A nun was dying in a hospital back in New York. The hospital chaplain went into see her. She was noli metuere a lot, because she was having a big operation the next day. She was very scared, elderly nun. Also a Dominican! And she said, "Oh, I'm so afraid. I've had such a bad temper all my life, and there's so many good things I should have done that I didn't do!" And the chaplain, knowing his Gospel, said, "Listen, you're worth more than a flock of sparrows; (he used the Bible phrase) I wish I had your courage!" And he turned to go out, and she said, "Hey, when you pray to Jesus again, tell him I'm running low on courage! And I'm running high on fear!" He said, "I wish I had your courage," and she said, "Well, I'm running low." But she did not despair because she acknowledged Christ all her life. Noli metuere. He'll defend us when we stand before the Father in death. Not this or that individual in the Church do you have to go on defending, but Christ and what he says? Yeah.

Anyhow, I got a phone call, also this week from a priest I used to be with at the World Trade Center, you know the parish I was at in New York before I got here. He used to call once a week, we would talk once a week in New York about the theme of Sunday's homily. So he said, "What's your theme for this Sunday?" I said, "I'm going to talk about fear!" And he said, "Oh not again!" (Laughter!) "You're always talking about fear!" I said, "Well, I identify!" He said, "You're not going to tell that story again, are you?" "What do you mean?" (I knew what he meant! Let's call him Don.) Don said, "You know, the one about high school freshman Latin, and Big Jim Burn came in , noli metuere, and scared little you put up your little brave hand, and said 'It means, don't be afraid?'" I said, "Yes, I always think of that story when I talk about noli metuere, don't be afraid." He said, "You told that story six years in a row at the World Financial Center. If you keep …" I said, "I won't because I don't think people should be afraid!" He said, "If you keep telling that story in California, you should be afraid!" (Laughter!) And he added, "Be very afraid," and very gently he hung up!