30 May 2018
Wednesday of the Eighth Week in Ordinary Time
When you realize that God is a just judge and that you are powerless to save yourself, but that you are saved by the blood of Christ, the correct response, according to St. Peter, is to conduct yourselves with fearduring the time of your sojourning (cf. 1 Pet 1:17-19). This idea of responding to God with fear(Gk. ἐν φόβῳ, Lat. in timore) is not restricted to the Old Testament. In fact, fear of the Lord is one of the seven gifts of the Holy Spirit.
It is not that we should have a phobiaof God the way some people might have a phobiaof enclosed places (claustrophobia). In other words, our fear should not be irrational. And it is not that we should fear God as if he were a capricious tyrant. On the contrary, we should trust him as the best, wisest and most loving of all judges.
In his Spiritual Exercises, St. Ignatius explains that there are two good types of fear: servile and filial. The former is the fear a servant feels towards his master, and the latter is the fear a son feels towards his father. Servile fear is good because it checks sin and because it leads to filial fear. Filial fear “is wholly pleasing and agreeable to God our Lord since it is inseparably associated with the love of Him” (SpEx 370).
Nothing happened in the 20thcentury to disprove the wisdom of these teachings. If you feel no fear whatsoever towards God, perhaps you should pray over 1 Pet 1:17-19 more carefully.