Praise be Jesus and Mary, now and forever.
We’ve been doing a series of counsels for a holy and a healthy spirituality. The last counsel that we spoke about was discipline. Today we’ll talk about fear. What role should fear have in our spiritual life?
Well, when’s the first mention of fear in the scriptures? You’ll actually find it in Genesis 3:10, when Adam said to the Lord, “I heard the sound of You in the garden, and I was afraid.” Why was Adam afraid? Because he’d just committed the first sin. So fear entered into the world only after sin had entered into the world, only after sin had entered into the human heart.
You’ll often run across the phrase “fear of God” or “the fear of the Lord” in scripture. A positive connotation of this phrase is found in Genesis 22:12, when the angel stops Abraham from sacrificing his son, and he says to Abraham, “Do not lay your hand on the lad or do anything to him, for now I know that you fear God, seeing that you have not withheld your son, your only begotten son, from Me.”  So Adam’s fear is fearfulness; Abraham’s fear is faithfulness. “Fear of the Lord is the beginning of knowledge” or understanding, Proverbs 1:7 says. When scripture says someone fears God or is God-fearing, it simply means that there’s someone who lives by the commandments, someone who follows the path that Abraham chose, not the one that Adam chose in the garden.
So the question: should I be fearful of God? The answer is, it depends on the lifestyle that you live. If you live a life of habitual and unrepentant sin, then yes, being afraid of God is appropriate.
Traditionally, though, they say that there are two types of fear in the spiritual life. I would say that we can add a third. There’s what’s called servile fear. “Servile” comes from the Latin word “servilis,” which means “of a slave.” It’s the fear of someone who does what’s right only because they don’t want to be punished, like a servant who simply behaves because they have to. If there were no punishment, they do those things that they know that they shouldn’t do. So it’s a fear that’s rooted more in pain and of punishment—fear of pain, fear of punishment.
In the spiritual life, it isn’t a bad type of fear. It’s not bad because God’s grace is operative in that person. At least they’re avoiding sin; at least they’re behaving.
The second type of fear is called filial fear. It’s not wanting to sin because I don’t want to hurt the One who loves me. “Filial” comes from the Latin word “filialis,” which means “of a son” or “of a daughter.” I don’t want to do this or that because I don’t want to offend God, who’s all good and who loves me infinitely. So filial fear is more rooted in love than in punishment.
The fear of the Lord, which the book of Proverbs speaks about, can begin with servile fear. I straighten out my life because I don’t want to go to hell. I don’t want to be judged. That’s good. But it’s intended to move to filial fear and not wanting to offend God because He loves me and because I love Him, not just because I’m afraid of Him.
The third type of fear in the spiritual life is simply those who are unafraid, meaning that they have no regard for God or His commandments. It’s a condition of the unrighteous and unjust judge in Jesus’ parable in Luke 18, where Jesus says, “Neither feared God nor regarded man” (Luke 18). You know, frankly, these people should be fearful of God’s punishment because they’re not living in the right way.
Spiritually, there is also what’s called the gift of the fear of the Lord. It’s one of the seven sanctifying gifts of the Holy Spirit. It perfects the theological virtue of hope. So it’s a loving reverence towards God that dreads offending Him or being separated from Him, like a child who might dread being separated from their parents in a strange place or at the store. So it’s very much tied to filial fear that we just spoke about, not the servile fear.
But essentially as we mature, we should move from fear to faith to love. I tend to think of it as three levels of growth. You know, fear is kind of like a hill, so you climb up the top of the hill and you can look down and get a better picture of the layout of the land. So too, when we turn from sin and we turn towards God, His grace gives us a clearer understanding of life, a clearer understanding of what’s right, what’s wrong.
Second level would be faith. So faith is on a higher plane. Faith can see more and see farther and see more clearly than fear can. So we move from fearing God’s punishment to trusting Him and to entrusting ourselves to Him. It’s actually a good move, by the way, when we make that move from fear to more of a spirit of faith.
The third level would be love. So fear is like a hill and faith is like a higher plateau. Love is like a mountain. It’s the mountain that St. John of the Cross climbs in his “Ascent of Mount Carmel.” At the top of the mountain is perfect union with God; it’s perfect charity. And on the mountain you can see the entire layout of the land. Of course, obviously, you’re much higher in the sky, much closer to the sun.
St. John the Apostle says in 1 John 4:18, “Perfect love casts out fear, for whoever fears has not reached perfection in love,” he says. So we can come to the point in our spiritual life where we can be so united to God that fear basically disappears. Yes, that filial fear, that fear of offending our Heavenly Father, does remain, but if our wills are truly united to God’s will, then we won’t offend Him, at least not seriously. And so we have no more reason to fear.
For those who are more academically inclined, fear is kind of like graduating from grammar school, faith like graduating from high school, love is kind of like graduating from college. Hopefully, it was a good college that you attended.
But many times in Scripture God exhorts us to not be afraid. First time we hear that phrase is in Genesis 15:1 where the Lord tells Abraham, “Al-tirah” in Hebrew—“Do not be afraid, Abraham, I am your shield,” He says.
In the New Testament, the angel says to Joseph, “Do not fear to take Mary as your wife” (Matthew 1:20). The angel Gabriel says to Zechariah, “Do not be afraid, Zechariah” (Luke 1:13). He says to Our Lady, “Do not be afraid, Mary” (Luke 1:30). And many times in the Gospels, our Lord tells the people, and He tells His disciples, “Have no fear,” “Do not be afraid.” Why? Because as our Lord says, “I am with you always. I’m always with you” (Matthew 28:20).
God’s presence helps dispel fear. And so the more we are practicing the presence of God or calling to mind that He is with us or calling on Him when we’re afraid, the less we will be fearful.
So the experience of fear is one thing; we’ll all have to suffer through that at times. Living in fear of God is something else, and it’s not how we’re called to live. Any type of spirituality which fosters within me the attitude of Adam—so the desire to hide from God—instead of the attitude of Abraham and Moses, the desire to grow closer to Him, you know, any spirituality which keeps me stuck in servile fear or in fearfulness needs to be traded in for something better.
And anyone who in their words or in their preaching or their attitudes or their perspectives—anyone who keeps me locked in servile fear—is spiritually doing me more of a disservice than a service. As well-intentioned as some priests and preachers or YouTube and social media personalities may be, sometimes you get the sense that they’re still stuck in kind of a spiritual grammar school, or maybe they’re still kind of like a freshman in high school spiritually. They need to graduate, and so do we, actually.
In our next reflection, we’ll look at fear in the life and spirituality of St. Thérèse of the Child Jesus.
Praise be Jesus and Mary, now and forever.