Be Not Afraid!

Over this past Labor Day weekend, our church celebrated 150 years of Catholic faith in our community. They spoke of brave and courageous pioneers that came to America for a brighter future.

These ancestors endured many hardships that today we can hardly imagine. They traveled with their few belongings, with horse and oxen on roadless paths to get to this point they called "home." As settlers in this foreign place, they battled the harshness of the northern plains, the bitterly cold winters and the sporatically hot summers. They helped each other to build their communities to what they are today out of their own sweat and toil. And they built their communities here, in America, for the promise of freedom and prosperity that they did not find in their homeland. They truly lived by the phrase "be not afraid."

In reflection of our ancestors' brave conquest of a new world, my own courage drastically pales in such comparison. I look at our country, and even our world today, and it seems we have lost that brave courage that spurred our forefathers to sacrifice all to live in this great country.

It is those who devalue our courage and our bravery, who say you are less of a person for standing up for what is truly right, that strike such fear against our courage. It is those who subvert the American way by demoting the values of the Constitution that create our "fear factor" today.

The "fear factor" is what brought our ancestors here many, many years ago. The fear of economic disaster. The fear of living in a corrupt country. The fear of tyranny. Our ancestors came here, to the United States, because of a document that held more power than any person could ever legally obtain in this country. It is this document that safeguards our freedom. The United States is the envy of the world, not due to our previous industrial economic success, but because of this document, the Constitution.

I am sure many of you have amazing stories of your own ancestry coming to the United States seeking the freedoms guaranteed by the Constitution. Such an elegant statement could ever be made was written in another document that started our country on the path to democracy. Those words "life, liberty, and the pursuit of happinesss"--unalienable rights to the people, as the Declaration of Independence most eloquently declared. That is why people sacrificed all, for the promise of a better tomorrow.

"We the people of the United States, in order to form a more perfect union, establish justice, insure domestic tranquility, provide for the common defense, promote the general welfare, and secure the blessings of liberty to ourselves and our posterity, do ordain and establish this Constitution for the United States of America."

The preamble of the Constitution succinctly echoes those words from the Declaration of Independence, and places the undeniable importance of the people in this new country at the very beginning with "We the people..."

Be not afraid... Yes, be not afraid... As long as the Constitution of the United States continues to be defended and stands as a living document for we, the people... Be not afraid.