Anxiety’s central message is that we cannot afford to share because we can never have enough.
Put more strongly, in a culture marked by anxiety and fear, as is happening today, the very things we have traditionally called sins or vices become wise and prudent virtues. Fear, rather than love, governs our lives.
But such fear is a kind of idolatry because it suggests we are giving more attention to material things than we are giving to God and others.
As someone has said, “The ethic of self produces a skewed moral vision. It suggests that suspicion, preemption, and accumulation are virtues insofar as they help us feel more secure.
“But when seen from a Christian perspective, such ‘virtues’ fail to be true virtues, since they do not orient us to the true good — love of God and neighbor. In fact, they turn us away from the true good, tempting us to love accumulating material things more than we love God and our neighbor.
The “human way out” of the despair of our age is through hospitality because a person well-practiced in Christian hospitality chooses love over fear and trust over suspicion.
Thanks to Paul J. Wadell for sharing these penetrating thoughts.
So far in 2026, have YOU been able to choose love over fear and trust over suspicion. What makes you say that?
DON’T ASK GOD TO GUIDE YOUR FOOTSTEPS IF YOU’RE TOO AFRAID TO MOVE YOUR FEET!
My Commentary:
This reflection names something many feel but rarely admit: fear has quietly taken the driver’s seat in our lives. Anxiety whispers that there is not enough — not enough security, not enough time, not enough resources — and so we tighten our grip. What was once called greed now feels like prudence. What was once suspicion now feels like wisdom. Fear disguises itself as virtue.
But the Gospel unmasks this illusion. When fear governs us, it shrinks our world. It turns our hearts inward. It tempts us to trust in what we can store rather than in the God who provides. In that sense, anxiety becomes a subtle form of idolatry — not loud or obvious, but powerful all the same. It asks us to believe that our safety lies in accumulation rather than in relationship — with God and with one another.
The Christian faith offers a different vision. It does not deny the uncertainties of life, but it refuses to let fear have the final word. Instead, it calls us to hospitality — a radical openness that says, “There is enough because God is enough.” Hospitality is more than welcoming someone into our home; it is welcoming others into our lives without suspicion, without calculation, without fear.
To live this way is not naïve — it is courageous. It is a quiet rebellion against the anxious spirit of our age. Each act of generosity, each moment of trust, each choice to love rather than hoard becomes a proclamation: fear will not rule me.
In the end, the measure of our lives will not be what we stored away, but what we gave away. For love multiplies what fear can only diminish.
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