Friday December 5, 2025 - Good News Ministries

Good News Reflections:
Making scripture meaningful to your daily life
by Terry Modica

Courage grows when we remember to keep our eyes on Jesus.

Good News Reflection for:

Friday of the 1st Week of Advent
December 5, 2025

Today’s Prayer:

My Lord, may my faith be able to open the doors to the wonders You want to work in my life. Amen.

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Today’s Readings:

Isaiah 29:17-24
Ps 27:1, 4, 13-14
Matthew 9:27-31
bible.usccb.org/bible/readings/120525.cfm
USCCB Podcast of the Readings:
bible.usccb.org/podcasts/audio/daily-mass-reading-podcast-december-5-2025

Why are you afraid?

Today our responsorial psalm says: “The Lord is my light and my salvation — whom should I fear?”

Who intimidates you? Whose rejection are you trying to avoid? But let’s not stop with the “who” of the matter. What are you afraid of right now? What disappointment do you fear? What’s worrying you? What’s stealing your joy and seems hopeless?

When we “gaze on the loveliness of the Lord” — when we take time to meditate on God’s love for us and his awesome power and his promises — we realize that there is no reason to be afraid.

We realize: God is so wonderful, so caring, so good, so almighty, and so concerned about my every need, my every longing, and my every prayer. Therefore, there is nothing that will happen to me that is so bad as to produce more harm than good!

When we have fear, we’re blind to the wonderfulness of the Lord, and like the two men in today’s Gospel passage, we need to be healed.

Faith is what heals us — faith that identifies Jesus as Lord, faith that appreciates the loveliness of the Lord, faith that knows that God will make good come from every hardship no matter how bad it looks.

This is the faith that empowers us to believe that we shall indeed “see the bounty of the Lord in the land of the living”, and this belief cures our fears.

This is the faith that is willing to “wait for the Lord with courage,” because we know that God is watching over us, and thus we experience courage even during the hardest hardships.

Fear is not of God. It does not belong in a Christian’s life. Neither does worry, because worry is the fear that we feel when we are trying to trust God but we doubt that he cares enough to make a difference.

Trusting God while overcoming this doubt converts worry into concern. Instead of anxiety we have hope. We care about the situation and we’re ready to problem-solve as the Lord leads.

Those who are blinded by fear are those who do not gaze upon the loveliness of the Lord. He is not their reason for hope, and thus they have valid reason to live in fear. Those of us who know better, however, because we have already seen the Lord do much good, have valid reasons to live in hope despite all the visible evidence to the contrary.

Hope produces courage. Do you have this courage? How visible is it? Your courage is another time of giving birth to Jesus.

Courage sags when we get distracted by our trials and hardships, focusing on the evidence of disaster instead of on the reasons for hope, taking our eyes off of what is pure and holy and loving and heavenly.

Courage grows when we remember to keep our eyes on Jesus.

For more on this subject, read our WordByte called: “Be not afraid to speak the truth” @ https://wordbytes.org/holyspirit/be-not-afraid-to-speak-the-truth/

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