Bad Advertisement?
Are you a Christian?
Online Store:Visit Our Store
| Chapter XIII. Of the fear which is the outcome of the greatest love.
PREVIOUS SECTION - NEXT SECTION - HELP 
Chapter XIII.
Of the fear which is the outcome of the greatest
love.
Whoever then has been
established in this perfect love is sure to mount by a higher stage to
that still more sublime fear belonging to love, which is the outcome of
no dread of punishment or greed of reward, but of the greatest love;
whereby a son fears with earnest affection a most indulgent father, or
a brother fears his brother, a friend his friend, or a wife her
husband, while there is no dread of his blows or reproaches, but only
of a slight injury to his love, and while in every word as well as act
there is ever care taken by anxious affection lest the warmth of his
love should cool in the very slightest degree towards the object of it.
And one of the prophets has finely described the grandeur of this fear,
saying: “Wisdom and knowledge are the riches of salvation: the
fear of the Lord is his treasure.”1730
He could not describe with greater clearness the worth and value of
that fear than by saying that the riches of our salvation, which
consist in true wisdom and knowledge of God, can only be preserved by
the fear of the Lord. To this fear then not sinners but saints are
invited by the prophetic word where the Psalmist says: “O fear
the Lord, all ye His Saints: for they that fear Him lack
nothing.”1731
For where a man
fears the Lord with this fear it is certain that nothing is lacking to
his perfection. For it was clearly of that other penal fear that the
Apostle John said that “He who feareth is not made perfect in
love, for fear hath punishment.”1732
There is then a great difference
between this fear, to which nothing is lacking, which is the treasure
of wisdom and knowledge, and that imperfect fear which is called
“the beginning of wisdom,”1733
and which has in it punishment and so
is expelled from the hearts of those who are perfect by the incoming of
the fulness of love. For “there is no fear in love, but perfect
love casteth out fear.”1734
And in truth
if the beginning of wisdom consists in fear, what will its perfection
be except in the love of Christ which, as it contains in it the fear
which belongs to perfect love, is called not the beginning but the
treasure of wisdom and knowledge? And therefore there is a twofold
stage of fear. The one for beginners, i.e., for those who are still
subject to the yoke and to servile terror; of which we read: “And
the servant shall fear his Lord;”1735
and in the gospel: “I no longer
call you servants, for the servant knoweth not what his Lord
doeth;” and therefore “the servant,” He tells us,
“abideth not in the house for ever, but the Son abideth for
ever.”1736
For He is
instructing us to pass on from that penal fear to the fullest freedom
of love, and the confidence of the friends and sons of God. Finally the
blessed Apostle, who had by the power of the Lord’s love already
passed through the servile stage of fear, scorns lower things and
declares that he has been enriched with good things by the Lord,
“for God hath not given us” he says “a spirit of fear
but of power and of love and of a sound mind.”1737
Those also who are inflamed with a
perfect love of their heavenly Father, and whom the Divine adoption has
already made sons instead of servants, he addresses in these words:
“For ye have not received the spirit of bondage again to fear,
but ye received the spirit of adoption, whereby we cry, Abba,
Father.”1738
It is of
this fear too, that the prophet spoke when he would describe that
sevenfold spirit, which according to the mystery of the Incarnation,
full surely descended on the God man:1739
| 1739 Homo
Dominicus. See the note on Against Nestorius, V. v. | “And there shall rest upon Him
the Spirit of the Lord: the Spirit of wisdom and of understanding, the
Spirit of counsel and of might, the Spirit of knowledge and of true
godliness,” and in the last place he adds as something special
these words: “And the Spirit of the fear of the Lord shall fill
Him.”1740
Where we must in the first place notice carefully that
he does not say “and there shall rest upon Him the Spirit
of fear,” as he said in the earlier cases, but he says
“there shall fill Him the Spirit of the fear of the
Lord.” For such is the greatness of its richness that when once
it has seized on a man by its power, it takes possession not of a
portion but of his whole mind. And not without good reason. For as it
is closely joined to that love which “never faileth,” it
not only fills the man, but takes a lasting and inseparable
and continual possession of
him in whom it has begun, and is not lessened by any allurements of
temporal joy or delights, as is sometimes the case with that fear which
is cast out. This then is the fear belonging to perfection, with which
we are told that the God-man,1741
who came not
only to redeem mankind, but also to give us a pattern of perfection and
example of goodness, was filled. For the true Son of God “who did
no sin neither was guile found in His mouth,”1742
could not feel that servile fear of
punishment.E.C.F. INDEX & SEARCH
|
