Pentecost Thursday
The Gift Of The Fear Of God
Preparation. - After meditating on the gifts perfecting the understanding, let us consider those that sanctify the will. First of all the gift of fear, which has two principal functions: first, it fills us with awe for the divine Majesty, and secondly, it causes us to dread being separated from God. Let us examine whether we possess this childlike fear, which recalls the divine presence to us and causes us to shun all deliberate faults. "The fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom" (Ps. 110. 10).
I. The Gift Of Fear Fills Us With Awe Toward God.
The chaste and childlike fear, which is a gift of the Holy Ghost, is not a servile or mercenary fear, but rather the deep respect of a son for his father, a respect which does not destroy, but perfects his love. The saints were governed by it all their life. It inspired the dignified and modest demeanor of St. Francis de Sales. When at prayer, he appeared as if annihilated before the supreme majesty of the Creator. The same was the case with St. Alphonsus, who always kept his head uncovered through respect for the presence of God.
But, it may be objected, is not this disposition calculated to contract the heart, to make a person unnatural and pusillanimous? No, says St. Bernard, for fear is the beginning of wisdom. Without depressing us, it inspires us with serious reflections on God's grandeur, justice and holiness, and especially on His immensity filling the whole universe, and thereby it gently secures us beforehand against inattention, unbecoming behavior, negligence and sloth in our duties and our relations with the Most High.
Let us examine whether fear produces these effects in us. Does the thought of the divine presence inspire us with sentiments of profound adoration, recollection, watchfulness and fervor? Who could yield to sloth when he says to himself: "I am under the eyes of the God of holiness," before whom "pillars of heaven tremble and dread at His beck" (Job. 26. 11). Nevertheless how numerous are our distractions, the wanderings of our mind, the want of restraint in our looks, in our demeanor during meditation, prayer, holy Mass, and our visits to the Blessed Sacrament!
O my God, impress in me sentiments of humility, fear and respect, by showing me, on one hand, my nothingness, ignorance, corruption and sins, and on the other, Thy infinite Being, Thy boundless wisdom, essential purity and uncreated holiness. Often recall to me Thy sovereign majesty filling the universe, and give me the grace, first, to adore Thee as the saints and angels do in heaven, and secondly, to testify to Thee a special veneration in the churches where the Blessed Sacrament is preserved.
II. The Gift Of Fear Enables Us To Avoid Sin.
The second effect of the gift of fear, according to St. Thomas, is the dread of losing God, or of being separated from Him by sin. the thought of God, of His majesty, justice, holiness, the respectful remembrance of His presence ought directly to produce in us the childlike fear of offending Him. Who, in fact, would dare to transgress a ruler's law in his very presence? How shall we, if we fear God, dare to outrage Him to His very face, to sin under his very eyes!
The infamous elders, when tempting Susanna, turned their eyes away from heaven, in order not to think of the judgements of God (Dan. 13. 9). The chaste heroine, on the contrary, replied to those guilty men: "It is better for me to fall into your hands without doing it, than to sin in the sight of the Lord" (Dan. 13. 23). The fear of God was for her more powerful than the homicidal threats of her would-be seducers. She preferred death to sinning against her Creator.
Such also should be our dispositions. We should be able to say with St. Alphonsus Rodriguez: "Lord, rather to undergo all the torments of hell, than to commit a single venial sin." And indeed, every venial sin, by offending God's infinite Majesty, is a far greater evil than all the punishments of the next life.
Hence St. Basil says: "Every Christian, possessed of the sentiments of a true child, and not of a slave, dreads to displease the Lord even in the smallest things," and therefore, as the Holy Ghost says, "neglect nothing" (Eccli. 7. 19). He neglects none of the duties of his state, none of his pious practices, none of the precautions necessary or useful for his perseverance. Modest in his looks, temperate at meals, mistrusting himself, how carefully he avoids danger and all that might alter the purity of his heart, or disturb the delicacy of his conscience.
O my God, how often have I yielded to dissipation of mind, to self-reliance, to the passion of wishing to see, hear and say every thing, at the risk of frequently offending Thee! Deign to help me to be more watchful, to control myself better, so that I may cease multiplying my faults to the detriment of Thy glory.
