26 Therefore fear them not. For nothing is covered that shall not be revealed: nor hid, that shall not be known.
27 That which I tell you in the dark, speak ye in the light: and that which you hear in the ear, preach ye upon the housetops.
28 And fear ye not them that kill the body, and are not able to kill the soul: but rather fear him that can destroy both soul and body in hell.
29 Are not two sparrows sold for a farthing? and not one of them shall fall on the ground without your Father.
30 But the very hairs of your head are all numbered.
31 Fear not therefore: better are you than many sparrows.
32 Every one therefore that shall confess me before men, I will also confess him before my Father who is in heaven.
33 But he that shall deny me before men, I will also deny him before my Father who is in heaven.
(Matthew 10:26-33)
The choice, in the Novus Ordo lectionary, to use the passage from Jeremias for the first reading is very appropriate in light of the Gospel for this Sunday. As St. Jerome explains,
This word [Gehenna] is not found in the Old Scriptures, but it is first used by the Saviour. Let us enquire then into its origin. We read in more than one place that the idol Baal was near Jerusalem, at the foot of Mount Moriah, by which the brook Siloc flows. This valley and a small level plain was watered and woody, a delightful spot, and a grove in it was consecrated to the idol. To so great folly and madness had the people of Israel come, that, forsaking the neighbourhood of the Temple, they offered their sacrifices there, and concealing an austere ritual under a voluptuous life, they burned their sons in honour of a dæmon. This place was called Gehennom, that is, The valley of the children of Hinnom. These things are fully described in Kings and Chronicles, and the Prophet Jeremiah. (2 Kings 23:10. 2 Chron. 28:3. Jer. 7:32; 32:35.) God threatens that He will fill the place with the carcases of the dead, that it be no more called Tophet and Baal, but Polyandrion, i. e. The tomb of the dead. Hence the torments and eternal pains with which sinners shall be punished are signified by this word.
As the holy Doctor says, Jeremias referenced Gehenna when he preached against the child sacrifice to Baal perpetrated in his day by Jews in Jerusalem, one of the worst elements of their attempt to imitate surrounding pagan nations, such as Babylon and Egypt, by participating in their idolatrous cults. By the time of Our Lord’s earthly ministry, the valley of Hinnom, i.e. Gehenna, where these sacrifices took place, was the garbage pit of Jerusalem and burned perpetually. Christ thus combined its original purpose and the horrific sin which the apostate Jews committed there, with its contemporary sense as a place of refuse and burning, to transform it into a physical symbol of the eternal damnation of Hell.
In this way, Christ offers to His disciples the same essential message which God offered to Jeremias and His other prophets in the Old Testament: do not fear those who can destroy the body but have no power over the soul. Fear only the judgment of God, who will judge and reveal all that we have done, internally and externally, and punish or reward us accordingly, and He will not allow those who have persecuted or even killed us to escape justice, no matter how luxuriously they may seem to live in this life.
In my opinion, the greatest expression of this truth outside of Scripture is the allegorical story entitled The Consolation of Philosophy, written by the late Roman Christian author and statesman St. Boethius, who was himself imprisoned and eventually martyred for criticizing the corruption in the Goth-controlled Roman government of his day. In this work, while he is in prison, he speaks to an allegory of wisdom called Lady Philosophy. In the story, Boethius observes,
While wickedness reigns and flourishes, virtue not only lacks its reward, but is even thrust down and trampled under the feet of the wicked, and suffers punishment in the place of crime. That this should happen under the rule of a God who knows all things and can do all things, but wills only the good, cannot be sufficiently wondered at nor sufficiently lamented.
But Lady Philosophy reveals to him that it is impossible for the good to lose or the evil to win, in this world or the next. This is because what all desire in everything they do – namely, the Good – cannot be achieved through evil. Thus, no matter how many worldly goods the wicked might accumulate in this life, they can never attain the true and total possession of the good, which is the definition of happiness given by Boethius. On the other hand, no matter what evils good people must suffer in this life, they still win because they possess the good that wicked people pursue but fail to achieve, both in this life and the next. As Lady Philosophy tells Boethius,
So, then, these are the blessings men wish to win; they want riches, rank, sovereignty, glory, pleasure, because they believe that by these means they will secure independence, reverence, power, renown, and joy of heart. Therefore, it is the good which men seek by such divers courses... [But,] by the will of Him of whose realm we are speaking, the good are always strong, the bad always weak and impotent; that vices never go unpunished, nor virtues unrewarded; that good fortune ever befalls the good, and ill fortune the bad.
So, as Christ taught, there is no need to fear wicked people, or any earthly evil, so long as we remain in the good. If we preserve our faith in Christ, testify to Him courageously before men, keep His commandments despite all temptation while repenting contritely when we sin and treating all with mercy and justice, we will have true happiness in this life and the next, whereas the wicked will be miserable now and for all eternity in Gehenna.
The ultimate reason for this, to go even deeper, is that God is the Good itself, and evil is merely a shadow, a privation of the Good without any real substance. So, if we have God, we have everything, and if we lack God, we have nothing. God has also given us the great gift of free will, something which no one, not even God due to the design He established, can violate or coerce. We can never be forced to sin, no matter how overwhelming our temptations and sufferings may feel, and by His grace, which St. Paul spoke of in the Epistle, our will can be strengthened to overcome any wickedness inside or out.
If we thus remain in His love and place our hope in Him, we will assuredly be rescued from the fires of this world, while those who live in ease and satisfaction now have only eternal fire awaiting them in the afterlife. The more popular and comfortable someone seems to be in this life, the more we should fear for their eternal soul – not that wealth and popularity themselves are immoral, but luxury and infamy are sinful because they represent desire for worldly goods unbalanced by generosity and a humble eschewing of material pleasures. This, of course, flies in the face of everything the world believes (and has always believed), but it is true nevertheless. May we remember this, for our own sake and the world’s, before it’s too late.
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Long live Boethius! Thank you Kaleb