Half-Hours With The Saints and Servants of God/Part 1: 2. On the Holy Fear of God
2.— On the Holy fear of God.
" With him that feareth the Lord, it shall go well in the latter end, and in the day of his death he shall be blessed."— Eccles. i. 13.
[L'Abbe de Bretteville, born in the year 1630 at Bretteville, near Caen in Normandy. In the year 1667 he entered the Society of Jesus, which order he, however, abandoned in 1678. He died in 1688.]
The fear of the terrible judgment of God is necessary to lead a sinner back to repentance, but love must be added to fear to make this repentance perfect.
It seems to me that there is implanted in the heart of man two natures; both combined will contribute to his conversion, and make it perfect and secure. In toto corde vestro.
There is in the heart an inferior nature, which is more worldly, and which can only be moved by sensible things; fear is for this portion of the heart; for it is by the contemplation of hell and the fearful consequences of vice that seizes the heart of man and turns it away from sin.
But there is in this same heart a superior celestial nature, which is only susceptible of the dawn of grace. This is love; this is that divine charity which moves that portion of the heart, and which makes it seek God for God's sake alone.
The conversion of the heart begins with fear and finishes with love.
To return to God simply through fear is, so to say, only half the battle. In order that we may be all for God, we must combine love with fear.
Is not the love of God sufficient, says the great St. Augustine, to make us avoid sin? Was it needful to employ fear and terrible threats? Timor in adjutorium amoris excitandus fuit
At least — if fear did what love should do, we should have less to complain of — what is so shocking is, that nowadays we have reached that pitch of indifference which is neither moved by fear nor by love, and that the most frightful things do not make any impression on our hearts.
[Father Faber. — This celebrated and justly appreciated Oratorian Father died on September 26, 1863. The reader is referred to Father John Bowden's interesting Life of this zealous servant of God.
Suffice it to say, that his hymns are sung throughout the length and breadth of the land, that his works have been translated in many an European language, and that his preaching entitled him to the name of the modern Chrysostom; for truly, like to that great saint and doctor, he was " honey-mouthed."]
The loss of holy fear is the mischief of all mischiefs. For this fear is a special gift of the Holy Ghost, to be sought for by prayer and penance, by tears and cries, by patience and impatience, and by the very yearnings of an earnest and familiar love. It has always seemed to me very and unexpectedly beautiful when in the special office of St. Philip Neri, knowing what manner of man he was, and what peculiar spirit he was of, it says in the antiphon of the Magnificat, " Come, my children, and I will teach you the fear of the Lord;" for how else shall the saint teach us divinest love?
Let us pass in review before ourselves the ancient patriarchs and their deep awe of God; how they trembled with holy fear when God was nigh, and looked upon all things as unspeakably hallowed over which He had so much as cast His shadow.
Jacob, who was so familiar with Him that he wrestled with Him, and would not let Him go till He had blessed him, stands eminent among the Saints of God for the gift and grace of fear. The very ritual of the old synagogue was steeped in fear and reverence. David, the man after God's own heart, was ever praying for an increase of holy fear. Our Blessed Lord himself, says the Apostle, in the days of His flesh was heard because He feared. Mary and the Apostles were filled, as none others ever were, with the beauty, the tenderness, and the excess of this heavenly fear.
Hundreds of dying Saints, around whose flesh and souls still clung the fair white robe of their unforfeited baptismal whiteness,- trembled in every limb as they pondered the possible judgments of Infinite Purity, beneath whose judicial eye they were about to stand.
If they needed this degree of fear, what degree need we?
Why do frustrate vocations so abound? Whence come the multitude of unfinished saints, that lie all around us like the broken models of a sculptor's studio?
Whence so little perseverance in the devout life, and such wearying and untying even of the vows and promises whereby men have bound themselves to God?
Whence but from the lack of fear!
Father Faber (Orat.)
On the Blessed Sacrament.
[Pere Nouet was born at Mans in 1605. He entered the Society
of Jesus at the early age of twenty. He is chiefly known for his ascetic works, which are still read and studied with great profit His beautiful meditations have been translated into the English language.
He died in Paris in the year 1680, aged seventy-five.]
There is nothing so bold, nothing more secure, than the fear of God.
He who fears God, fears naught else; and he who has a dread of displeasing Him, or a fear of forfeiting His love, does not shrink from suffering — cares not if he lose all, provided he be in a state of grace.
It is said that love banishes fear; but it is the baneful fear of man, or that servile and imperfect fear which dreads the shame of sin more than the sin that brings the shame.
I say more than this. There are times when it is necessary to fortify the fear of sin by the fear of hell, in order to strengthen us in the love of God; as when we are assailed by some violent temptation, which is not so easy to overcome if we are not well grounded in the fear of God.
Let us, then, henceforth combine fear with love. These are the two supports of the soul which attach us to God, like unto His mercy and justice which go hand in hand together. Do not let us sever the one from the other, if we wish to walk on the road to heaven without swerving from the paths of perfection.
Let us often say with humility that prayer of the Church: " Make us, O Lord, keep always before our eyes the love and fear of Your holy Name."
If a depraved mind be not shaken and humbled by the fear of God, it will never amend its habitual sins.