Have no anxiety at all. Is that possible? I don’t know. St. Paul says it is. In 2001, on 9/11, the entire United States shut down all planes coming into America. That means every plane that was coming into America had to be diverted. There was one very amazing place in Newfoundland, which is a little island off Canada. The town is called Gander, a small town of 10,000 people. They ended up landing thirty-eight planes at this little airport, and on those thirty-eight planes, there were 7,000 passengers and crew. In a matter of hours, the town of Gander almost doubled. The people waited on the planes for hours until they figured out what was happening in America, and then after that they needed to get off the planes. So, the people of Gander rallied. They opened their churches, their homes, and their halls to bring the people in and to take care of them for the next week that they would be stranded there.
It is such a beautiful story that they made a Broadway show about it called “Come from Away.” It is the most spectacular show, but there is one scene that I found to be so powerful, and this is the scene. Everybody is coming off the planes and they are getting on to the school buses. They used all the school buses to take them to all these various places. Some of them were remote. The sun had set and now it was dark.
There was one bus that was taking people from Africa, all Africans. The bus driver picked them all up and they got on the bus, and he saw that they were terrified. They didn’t know how to speak English. They didn’t know what was going on. They weren’t even sure what was happening with September 11th. As he brought them to this remote part of the village, he began to ask them to get off the school bus. And he noticed that they were frozen. They didn’t want to move. They were terrified. He saw one of the African women, and she had a Bible. She was clutching her Bible, and he knew something. He knew the Bible well enough that it probably had the same chapters and verses. So, he went over to her, and he motioned, ‘Can I see your Bible.’ It took her a moment and finally she gave him the Bible. He opened it up and he knew it was in the New Testament, so he flipped to Philippians 4:6, which is what we heard today. He opened the Bible, and he pointed to the verse, which was in African. He said, “Be anxious for nothing.”
The lady’s countenance began to settle a little bit, he opened it up again, and he pointed at it, and he said, “Be anxious for nothing.” All of a sudden, her face became calm, and she was able to tell everybody else, “We’re going to be okay. Don’t be anxious. These people are good. They’re going to take care of us.”
Then they got them all off the bus, and for the next week they hosted them. The whole town came together. They fed them and they clothed them and took care of them. They laughed, they celebrated, and it became this wonderful community that went from 10,000 people to 17,000 people in a matter of hours. But the universal language that got through to them was the word of God: “Be anxious for nothing.”
I know for all of us there are various times in our lives that we’re anxious, we’re worried about things. St. Paul says that we should have no anxiety at all, and then he tells us how to have no anxiety at all. He says, “By prayer and petition…make your requests known to God, Then the peace of God, that surpasses all understanding, will guard your hearts and your minds.” How do we be anxious over nothing?” It’s that simple. Make our request known to God, tell God what you’re worried about, what you’re anxious about, and then give it to him. Trust that he is your father, and he is going to take care of it. We have no need to be anxious.
I think the other way is, sometimes we need people to point out to us when we are anxious, and to do just what that man did to the Africans. To point to the Bible and say, “Do not be anxious at all.” There are probably times in our lives where we know other people that are anxious, and we can do the same thing for them. We can point out to them, “Be anxious over nothing.” It’s something that we all need to hear, something that we probably need to be pointed out to us from time to time. It is the word of God. The word of God brings about the effect. If we hear the word of God, “Be anxious for nothing,” the effect will be brought about in us.
As we celebrate this Gaudete Sunday, we rejoice, and here’s why we rejoice: because “The Lord is near.” In the first reading we hear from the prophet Zephaniah, “The Lord is in your midst. You have no misfortune to fear… Renew yourself in his love.” Then we hear in the second reading, again this repetition, “The Lord is near, have no anxiety at all.”
As we approach this final week towards Christmas where we celebrate the Lord’s coming into our lives, there’s probably a lot of anxiety as everyone’s trying to get things ready to celebrate this beautiful day of Christmas. We don’t need to be anxious, we don’t need to be worried, because the Lord is near. Sometimes we need this to be pointed out to us and sometimes we need to point it out to others. It is possible, my dear brothers and sisters, “To be anxious for nothing.”
