The most holy Author says,
«"There is no fear of God before their eyes," says the Apostle. And with this brief sentence, he explains every depravation of an uncircumcised spirit.
The majority of Catholic men - and I speak to these and of these because they have received the seven admirable gifts of the Paraclete and they should, because of this, know at least strength, peace, and the light which comes from them and the truth of their nature - the majority of Catholics does not exactly know what the fear of God is, nor how it is to be practiced.
Even here, there are three categories. That of the scrupulous, that of the quietists or the indifferent, and that of the just. However, before speaking about them, I will speak of the gift.
What is the fear of God? Is it a fear of Him, almost as if He were an inexorable executioner who takes delight in punishing, an inquisitor who does not let the tiniest of imperfections go unnoticed in order to send one to the eternal tortures? No. God is love, and one must not have any fear of Him. Correctly does His divine eye see all actions, even the smallest ones of men. Correct is His divine justice. However, just because it is so does He know how to assess the good will of men and the circumstances in which man may find himself, those circumstances which are quite often the same temptations to sin with pride, and therefore, with disobedience, anger, avarice, gluttony, lust, envy and sloth.
God severely punished Adam and Eve; however, mercy was quickly joined to His punishment: the promise of a Redeemer who would have removed them from the prison consequent to the sin, they and their children and those having come from the children of the children. To Adam and Eve, full of innocence and grace, endowed with integrity and knowledge proportional to their sublime state and to their even more sublime end - to pass from the terrestrial Paradise to the celestial one and to enjoy their God in eternity - God could have very well given them eternal damnation. Because they had received all of what was needed to be able to sanctify themselves and be perfect against every temptation, and they had received it without having had foments of sin within them.
You, men, have these foments. Baptism and the Sacraments cleanse you from original sin, they render Grace to you and infuse in you the principal virtues, or they cancel the sins committed after the power of reason, or they fortify you with the very strength of Christ by nourishing yourselves of Him, or they sustain you with the state of grace. However, the legacy of Original Sin remains with the foments, and upon this inheritance, upon this residue of the contagion received from the Progenitor, Satan works with a higher rate of success than not on Adam and Eve.
Given that one of the axioms of the divine Justice is this, "And to whomsoever much is given, of him much shall be required," to Adam and Eve, who had received everything and who did not have any hereditary taints in them but the unique perfection of having emerged formed by the hands of God, by the Thought of God - because God, solely with His thought, commanded the clay to shape itself according to His design, and the clay's molecules, both inert and deaf matter, obeyed, because everything obeys to the commands of God, everything except Satan and a more or less rebellious man - to Adam and Eve, who had emerged created by the Thought of God and animated by His breath, to Adam and Eve everything had to be requested and demanded, and in the case of sin, everything had to be withdrawn and punishment without end had to be given.
They knew God. They conversed with Him in the cool of the evening. He, besides being their Creator, was their Master, and they were the first "voices" destined to reveal to the future [voices] the truths learnt from God. And nonetheless, though having known the Perfection, they were curious of the Horror and they listened to the Horror by not following the Word of God. They strongly offended the Father Creator and the Son of the Word who instructed them on Good and Evil, on created things, animals and plants; they, ungrateful, offended the Love because they forgot, on account of a lubricious Seducer who tempted them towards a fruit, one only, all of the Love He had given to them so that they could be happy.
However, God did not punish them with Hell. Could He have not perhaps fulminated them, there at the feet of the tree of Trial which had become for them the tree of Concupiscence? They had voluntarily mutated it into such and it would have been just that they perish, they, the true evil plant born from the perfect Seed - the divine Thought - had become evil because it had been poisoned by the infernal slaver. Could God not have ordered the Archangel to strike them with his sword of fire there, at the threshold of the terrestrial Paradise, so that their unclean bodies would not contaminate the Earth, and from that boundary, would precipitate into the Abyss where the one whom they had preferred to God had come out?
He could have. And it would have been in His full right. However, Mercy and Love tempered the condemnation with the promise of Redemption, and therefore, of an eternal reward.
Those, all those who die with scruples and who thus offend the Paternity of God, His Love, His Essence, by believing Him to be a terrible God, intolerant of every weakness in His little children, intransigent, gauging the little ones to His infinite Perfection, should reflect on this. Who would ever be saved if God were as they conceive Him to be? If the measure of human perfection were that of the divine Perfection, who would inhabit the Heavens amongst the children of Adam? One only: Mary.
But if it has already been said, "You must be perfect, as my Father and yours," it is not to also dismay you, but to spur you to do the most that you are able to do. You will be judged - I do not tire of repeating it - not for the perfection achieved in perfect measure by gauging it to the divine one, but for the love with which you will have sought to achieve.
In the command of love, it is said, "Love with your whole self." This "self" changes from person to person. There is he who loves like a seraph and he who knows how to love only like a child, very embryonically. However, the Master, given that the majority knows how to love like children - very embryonically - whereas only a few exceptional creatures know how to love seraphically, has proposed to you a child as a model. Not Himself. Not His Mother. Not His putative father. No. A child. To His Apostles, to Peter, head of the Church, He proposed as a model, a child.
Love with the perfection of a child who believes without scientific lucubrations in order to explain mysteries to himself; who hopes without paralyzing fear, the fruit of too much reasoning, of going into beautiful Paradise; who loves God serenely, thought of as a good Father, a good Brother, and a good and protective Friend, who does his little good in order to please Jesus; and you will be perfect in your perfect measure, perfect in your relative goodness, as God is perfect in His infinite goodness.
The fear of God is therefore not the terror of God. This ought to be remembered by those who are ill with scruples, who offend God in His love and paralyze themselves in perpetual agitation. They ought to remember that a bad deed becomes more or less a sin according to whether one is convinced that it is a sin, or is uncertain whether it be one, or does not believe at all that it is so. Therefore, even if one does a deed that is not truly sinful but is convinced that it is, he commits an unjust thing because his desire is to do something unjust, whereas if one who does something unjust ignores that it is so, truly ignores that it is so, God will not impute that thing to him as a sin.
So too, when special circumstances obligate a man to perform deeds which the Decalogue or other evangelical laws prohibit (executioners who must carry out justice, soldiers who have to fight and kill, conspirators who in order not to send their companions to the gallows and damage superior interests swear that they are the only guilty ones and die in order to save others), God will judge the imposed homicide or perjurious hero with justice. As long as the purpose of the action be upright and accomplished with justice.
Fear is not terror. However, even the fear of God is not quietism. The opposites of the scrupulous are the quietists. They are those who, out of an excessiveness of faith but a disorganized faith, do not make haste of doing any good because they are sure that God is so good, of always being content with everything. And with every study, they seek to remain seated in their static drowsiness by closing their mind to the truths which they do not like to know, that is, to those who speak of punishment, purgatory, hell, the duty to do penance, and working in order to perfect themselves.
They are turbid and proud souls. Yes, because quietists are proud; proud by believing themselves already perfect to the point of being certain of never sinning. Proud because even if they do acts of mercy and penance, they are external acts in order to have the name and praise of "saints". They are without love because they are egotists. Upon their altar is their I, it is not God. They are liars, and often, they pretend to be the contemplatives and favourites of God possessing extraordinary gifts. However, it is not God who favours them, but Satan who seduces them in order to lead them always more astray. They believe themselves to be poor in spirit because they do not have the holy haste of performing good deeds in order to merit Heaven, but they are not poor of spirit; rather, they are full of the deepest and pettiest greeds and avarices, and they are slothful. They are intemperate because they do not refuse anything of matter and if one were to say to them, "What you do is not lawful," they would reply, "God wants it so in order to test us. However, we know how to come out from the illicit with the same ease with which we enter because we are established in God." They are true heretics and God abhors them.
In the end, there are the just. They have the sweet, reverential fear of God. They fear giving sorrow to God, and because of this, they seek with all their strength to make every action good and in the best way possible to them. If they fall into an imperfection or sin, they have an ardent repentance and they go to lay it at the feet of God, and with an ardent will of reparation. Involuntary sin does not paralyze them. They know that God is the Father and that He has pity on them. They cleanse, restore, and rebuild that which the multiple and assailing Insidiousness has traitorously sullied, damaged, and dejected: they do this with their love which they invoke ever more strongly from the divine Love, "Infuse your Love in my heart." These have the true fear of God.
What is then the true fear of God which is always alive in their spirits? The fear of God is love, humility, obedience, fortitude, sweetness, meekness, temperance, activity, purity, wisdom and ascension. And the true Model of the perfect fear of God is given by Christ, who loved God with such a love that He cheerfully and willingly submitted to every desire of the Father as far as to the obedience on the cross, who was humble to the extent of lowering Himself down onto the feet of the traitor and kissing them, who was strong against all the insidiousnesses, sweet as a child, temperate like an ascetic, meek as a lamb, pure like an angel, more than an angel, wise, being Man one with God, the contemplator who ascended with His spirit enraptured with perfect adorations that made the Heavens rejoice; finally, arising from the Earth, from the Man, was an adoration that satiated the fire of God.
Even Mary was an example of perfect fear. However, She was who She was in view of the merits of the Son. And therefore once again, one must say that He who forever was the possessor of perfect fear was the Word of God through whom everything was accomplished, even the marvel of Heaven and Earth: the Immaculate Virgin, Daughter, Mother, and Spouse of God.
Only one verse of the many has She been commented on. However, the importance of it is such that the Wisdom has lingered on it.
Possess the perfect fear of God and you will possess perfect love, and therefore, you will possess God and you will be possessed by Him. Forever.»