The Gift of Fear of the Lord

By Fr. Conor Donnelly

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In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.

My Lord and my God, I firmly believe that you are here, that you see me, that you hear me. I adore you with profound reverence. I ask your pardon for my sins and grace to make this time of prayer fruitful. My Immaculate Mother, Saint Joseph, my father and lord, my guardian angel, intercede for me.

We're told in the Psalms, “The fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom” (Ps. 110:10).

These words from the Bible tell us that fearing the Lord and recognizing His sovereignty and omnipotence are for mankind the beginning of self-knowledge.

Men must learn to correctly judge themselves with regard to God. This is a gift that the Holy Spirit gives us, a gift of fear of the Lord, a right type of fear.

If we meditate well on the passing nature of this life and the fact that it comes to an end, then we are protected from a certain pride which always precedes defeat.

The anxiety and the fear that can affect man when he reflects on his futility from the beginning to the end of his existence are transformed to fear and respect for the Lord, filled with wonder and admiration.

St. Teresa of Ávila says, “Let nothing frighten you, because he who follows God possesses everything, because God's love is present in Jesus Christ, and neither death nor evil will any longer be capable of damaging mankind.”

St. Paul says, “Neither the heights nor the depths nor any creative thing whatever will be able to come between us and the love of God known to us in Christ Jesus our Lord” (Rom. 8:39).

Fear of the Lord really means trusting God with total abandonment. Our only fear is sin, fear of offending Him, which is a fear of offending the one that we love.

This gift of fear of the Lord allows us to endure anything—loneliness, poverty, ridicule, pain—even when we might easily avoid such suffering by giving in to temptation.

In the most literal sense of the word, we would rather die than commit a sin. That leads us to have a lot of joy.

St. John Damascene said, “When facing God, His Creator and Redeemer, man loses all servile fear and dread and achieves the joyful knowledge of God's sovereignty, which is an ocean of love.”

“It is the very spirit,” says St. Paul, “that has filled our hearts and makes us say to God, ‘Abba! Father!’” (Gal. 4:6). Come, Father!

That also includes the fear of God and the seven gifts of the Spirit, we're told in Isaiah 11:2.

Fearing the Lord allows us to preserve a certain correct relation between the detachment and the closeness of the creatures to God.

God is neither omnipotence without love, nor the cause of fear and terror, nor love that wishes to annul the difference between the Creator and the creatures.

Only in this way can man be saved from the experience of total futility facing an arbitrary God, and at the same time also from wanting to centralize God's attention on his own selfish intents and ends.

But with the spiritual gift of the fear of the Lord in his heart, the disciple understands the words spoken by Jesus during the washing of the feet in the Cenacle: “You hail me as the Master and the Lord, and you are right, it is what I am” (John 13:13).

The disciple learns to understand God's love, “who so loved the world that he gave his only begotten Son, so that those who believe in him might not perish, but have eternal life” (John 3:16).

We're no longer dependent or slaves to guilt, but friends of Christ and heirs to eternal life.

This gift that is usually mentioned last in the list of the seven is something very rich and powerful; helps us to grow in our spiritual life.

When we talk of the words “fear of God” or “fear of the Lord,” it's not fear that causes people to flee from every thought and memory of Him, as someone who disturbs us or upsets us, some sort of a tyrant.

This was a little bit of the state of mind of our first parents when they “hid themselves from the Lord God among the trees of the garden,” we're told in the Book of Genesis (Gen. 3:8).

It was also the sentiment of the unfaithful and wicked servant in the Gospel parable who hid the talent he had received (Matt. 25:18,25).

He had the wrong type of fear. He feared God because he thought He was a very exacting master.

This type of fear is not the true concept of the fear which is the gift of the Holy Spirit.

It's a matter of something more noble and lofty; it's a sincere and reverential feeling that a person experiences before the tremendous majesty of God, particularly when he reflects upon his own infidelity and the danger of being “found wanting” (Dan. 5:27) at the eternal judgment which no one can escape.

The believer places Himself before God with a contrite spirit and a humble heart. “A humble and contrite heart, O Lord, you will not spurn” (Ps. 51:17).

Knowing well that he must await his own salvation, St. Paul says, “with fear and trembling” (Phil. 2:12).

That doesn't mean an irrational type of fear, but a sense of responsibility and fidelity to the law.

All this is why the Holy Spirit takes up and elevates the gift of the fear of the Lord. Yet at the same time, it doesn't exclude the trepidation that may arise from awareness of faults we have committed and the prospect of divine chastisement, but it mitigates it with faith in the divine mercy and with the certitude of the Fatherly concern of God who wills the eternal salvation of each one of us.

The father of the prodigal son in the parable gives us a very good picture of God Our Father always looking out for his son. He sees him a long way off. He's filled with joy. My son is coming back, filled with mercy.

The older son, by contrast, has no mercy for his brother. He's full of righteousness and justice, but no mercy. There's no love there, whereas Our Father God is full of love.

The Holy Spirit instills in our souls a filial love, which is a sentiment rooted in the love of God.

The soul becomes concerned not to displease God, whom he loves as a Father, but rather, to “abide in Him” and grow in charity (cf. John 15:4).

The soul who has this gift doesn't just look at the mortal sins or even the venial sins, or come to Confession with a calculating mentality, but looks at the details.

Have I neglected God in some way? Have I had a tender love for Jesus? Have I shown that tender love in concrete ways?

Padre Pio told a lady who came to him for Confession who had missed Mass the previous Sunday, but didn't really mean to miss Mass. It was sort of circumstances, and so she didn't confess it, but he could read her soul. He said to her, “I know you didn't commit a mortal sin, but your negligence hurt our Lord.”

We have to try and function in the realm of negligence, having that sensitivity, that refinement in our spiritual life, so that we flee from all things that may offend God.

The practice of other virtues like humility, temperance, chastity, mortification of the senses can often depend on this holy and just fear, united in the soul with love for God.

St. Paul says, “Since we have these promises, beloved, let us cleanse ourselves from every defilement of flesh and spirit, making holiness perfect in the fear of God” (2 Cor. 7:1).

It's a warning for all of us when we may so easily transgress God's law, ignoring or defying His chastisements.

The world is very happy and content and enthusiastic about emphasizing God's mercy, infinite mercy. But we can also remember that God is also infinitely just. There may be very imperfect justice in this world, but there'll be perfect justice in the next.

St. Teresa said that God bestows two remedies for all temptations and trials that we may have to endure: “love and fear. … Love will make us quicken our steps,” she says, “while fear will make us look where we are setting our feet so that we will not fall” (St. Teresa of Ávila, The Way of Perfection).

Another spiritual writer said, “Not every fear is good. There's a worldly fear, a fear of those who fear physical evil above all else, or the social disadvantages that can come upon them in this life. They can flee from all earthly inconveniences: as soon as they foresee that fidelity to a Christian way of living can cause them any hardship, they show themselves easily ready to abandon Christ and His Church.”

This type of fear can “spring human respect and it can be the source of countless surrenders and betrayal itself” (Francis Fernandez, In Conversation with God, Point 2/93).

That fear which is called servile is quite different. This turns the soul from sin because of fear of the punishment of hell or for some other self-interested supernatural motive.

It's a good fear, because for many who may be far away from God this can be the first step towards their conversion, and “the beginning of love,” we're told in the Book of Sirach (Sir. 25:12).

But this should not be the chief motive of the Christian. On many occasions, it can be a great defense against temptation and all the allurements of evil.

St. John says, “He who fears is not perfected in love” (1 John 4:18) because the true Christian acts through love and is created to love.

The holy fear of God, gift of the Holy Spirit, is that which dwelt, with the other gifts in the Most Holy Soul of Christ and which also filled Our Lady.

It is the gift of holy souls, which persists eternally in heaven and leads the blessed, together with the angels, to give continual praise to the Most Blessed Trinity.

St. Thomas Aquinas says that this gift is a consequence of the gift of wisdom and is, as it were, its outward sign (Thomas Aquinas, Summa Theologiae, Part II-II, Question 45).

Filial fear, a fear of offending Our loving Father, is proper to children who feel protected by their Father, whom they don't wish to offend in any way.

There can be two results: an immense respect for God's majesty, a deep discernment of what is sacred, and a limitless rejoicing in His goodness as a Father.

The latter one is more important since this was the only one present in Christ and in Our Lady. This gift of fear enables us to acknowledge our nothingness before God.

“I am nothing, I can do nothing, I have nothing” (cf. Josemaría Escrivá, Friends of God, Point 215).

We might frequently repeat those words of St. Josemaría, which he liked to say, while at the same time realizing the incalculable grandeur of knowing oneself and of being a child of God.

That fear, the filial fear of God, leads us to have a hatred for sin. During our life on earth, there is another effect that's derived from this gift, and that's that great horror of sin, and a great contrition if we have the misfortune of falling into sin.

By the light of faith, illumined by the splendor of the other gifts, the soul grasps something of the transcendence of God—He is over, above, and beyond—and of the infinite distance and the abyss which sin opens between man and God.

The only real evil in the world is sin. The world may present many other things to us as sinful or as sin: not having certain possessions, failing an exam, missing a shot, not having power or success, money, diabetes, or cancer, but none of these things are evils, because none of these things can keep us out of heaven.

The only thing that can keep us out of heaven is sin.

The gift of fear of the Lord enlightens us to understand that sin is “at the root of all the moral evils which divide and ravage society” (John Paul II, Letter, January 25, 1983).

If God does not live in the hearts of men in the state of grace, then the devil lives there. Hence, the importance of the apostolate of Confession to help people to live in the state of grace.

In any organization, or team, or club, or government, if the majority of people are not in the state of grace, then the devil can be running organizations; he can be running the world.

The gift of fear of the Lord leads us also to a hatred for deliberate venial sin and also, the drive to react strongly against the first symptoms of lukewarmness, or carelessness, or mediocrity.

At particular moments in our life we all need to repeat insistently, as an urgent petition: Lord, “I don't want to be lukewarm! Grant me, my God,” we're told in The Way, “a filial fear that will make me react!” (J. Escrivá, The Way, Point 326).

We try to reject all sin. Love and fear need to be companions along our way.

St. Gregory of Nyssa said, “When love banishes fear, fear itself is changed into love” (Gregory of Nyssa, Homily 15 on the Song of Songs).

It is the fear of a child who loves his Father without reserve, and who will allow nothing in the world to distance him from that Father.

Mother Teresa spoke at a retreat for priests in Rome many years ago, standing without any papers, talking to a thousand priests. She said, “We have to have a tender love for Jesus.”

Very beautiful words falling from her lips in particular—a tender love for Jesus that leads us to be full of love and to show it in all sorts of ways.

We want to love Our Father without reserve.

When we have that refinement and sensitivity, then the soul understands better the infinity that separates it from God, and at the same time, its condition as a child of God.

We're called to lead a total abandonment. The Holy Spirit with His graces brings about this change and this disposition in our souls.

So up to that moment, possibly never before had it trusted so much in God. And at the same time now, never before has it respected and venerated Him more.

If we ever lose the holy fear of God, the sense of sin can become diluted or vanished. Welcome to the world in which we live.

And then tepidity can easily enter the soul. It fails to discern the power and majesty of God and the honor due to Him.

We need also to take care of all the spiritual things, all the liturgical things, so we give God that honor and respect.

We cannot bring the supernatural world nearer by trying vainly to eliminate God's transcendence. We have to be lifted up to Him.

The way to do it is through the divinization wrought in us by grace—a rather beautiful idea that the Holy Spirit is all the time working on our soul in grace, building our character, building our virtue, building us up to be the people that God wants us to be; while at the same time, teaching us humility and love expressed in the struggle to banish all sin from our life.

If we have a sense of sin, if we have a great refinement in our spiritual life, then we'll have a great refinement with Our Lord. We will love our weekly appointment for Confession, or those other moments in the Mass when the Blessed Eucharist comes into our souls in grace.

“If we are to try to banish this evil from our life…we first of all have to try and ensure that our dispositions, both habitual and actual, are those of a clear aversion to sin, so that we don't dialogue with temptation; we flee.

“Sincerely,” we're told in Friends of God, “in a manly way, we must develop, both in our heart and in our mind, a sense of horror from mortal sin. We must also cultivate a deep-seated hatred of deliberate venial sin, those negligences which, while they don't deprive us of God's grace, do serve to obstruct the channels through which grace comes to us” (J. Escrivá, Friends of God, Point 243).

We have to try and keep those channels open, clean, free-flowing, not presenting any obstacles.

Nowadays, many people seemed to have lost the holy fear of God. They forget who God is and who they are. They forget divine justice “and so they're encouraged to persist in their follies,” we're told in The Way (Point 747).

The meditation from time to time on our final end, on the Last Things—death, judgment, heaven, hell, and purgatory—can be very formative.

It helps us to think about those realities that we might encounter sooner than we think, helps us to prepare for that definitive meeting with God, where He will put our talents and abilities on one part of the scale, and maybe our defects on the other; things we have achieved, but also things we haven't achieved, our omissions.

That consideration of death and the Last Things can dispose us to receive more fully, from the Holy Spirit, this gift which is so near to love.

Our Lord tells us in Scripture, in many ways, and on many occasions, that there's only one thing that we need to be afraid of, and that is sin, because that takes away our friendship with God.

Confronted with any difficulty, any situation, an uncertain future, we have no reason to fear. We should be strong and courageous as befits children of God because we know we're carried in the palm of the hand of a God who loves us.

A Christian cannot live in terror, but should have in his heart a holy fear of God, whom he loves madly.

Throughout the Gospel, Our Lord “repeats many times, ‘Do not fear…do not be afraid…do not let your hearts be troubled.’ And at the same time, with those appeals for fortitude, there's also the exhortation: ‘Rather fear him who can destroy both body and soul in hell’ (Matt. 10:28).”

John Paul II said, “We are called to fortitude and at the same time to fear of God…and this should be a fear that comes of love, a filial fear. And only when this fear sinks into our hearts can we be really strong with the strength of the apostles, the martyrs, and the confessors” (John Paul II, Address, June 30, 1979).

Among the principal effects which the fear of God works in our souls are detachment from created things, and an interior attitude of vigilance to avoid the least occasion of sin.

“The whole soul,” said Saint Paul, “develops a certain sensitivity to discern whatever can grieve the Holy Spirit” (Eph. 4:30).

The gift of fear lies at the root of humility, because it shows the soul its own fragility and teaches it the need of maintaining a will faithfully and lovingly subjected to the infinite Majesty of God.

Where would we be without Our Father God?

We don't want to oust God from His place; happy to stay in ours, we don't want honors which are for His glory. One of the signs of pride is ignorance of the fear of God.

The gift of the fear of God, like humility, has an affinity with the virtue of temperance. It leads us to use human goods in moderation, in secondary place to our supernatural end.

The root of sin is most frequently found in the disordered search for the sense pleasures or for material things. And in that situation this gift is active, purifying the heart and keeping it entire for God.

The gift of fear is above all the struggle against sin. All the other gifts help in this specific mission: the insight bestowed by the gifts of understanding and wisdom show one the greatness of God and the true meaning of sin.

The practical directives of the gift of counsel maintain us in an untiring battle against evil. We know at the same time that we are capable of all the greatest evils. We are all potential Hitlers because of our wounded human nature.

The holy fear of God will lead us to savor contrition easily and repentance arising from that filial love.

St. Teresa says, “Love and fear of God! These are two strong castles where we can manage to wage war on the world and on the devils” (St. Teresa of Ávila, The Way of Perfection).

The holy fear of God will lead us to a prudent mistrust of ourselves so as to free ourselves quickly from the occasions of sin.

Lord, I don't trust myself. I can't be in certain situations. I know myself. I know there are certain situations I cannot handle. Therefore, we flee.

It inclines us to a greater sensitivity for God and all that refers to God. We could ask the Holy Spirit to help us, by means of this gift, to recognize our faults sincerely and to feel true sorrow for them.

May the Holy Spirit make us react like the Psalmist when he says, “My eyes shed streams of tears, because men do not keep your law” (Ps. 118:136).

We can pray that with a sensitive soul, we may always keep our sense of sin alive.

We ask the Holy Spirit, that He may generously pour out this gift of the holy fear of the Lord on all the people of our day.

We invoke Him through the intercession of her who, at the message from the heavenly messenger, “was greatly troubled” (Luke 1:29) and, although perturbed by the unimagined responsibility that was being entrusted to her, she was able to pronounce her fiat of faith: “Let it be done to me according to your word” (Luke 1:38).

Mary responds with faith, obedience, and of love.

I thank you, my God, for the good resolutions, affections, and inspirations that you have communicated to me during this meditation. I ask your help to put them into practice. My Immaculate Mother, Saint Joseph, my father and lord, my guardian angel, intercede for me.

In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.

EW