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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." 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." 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." 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," 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." 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;" 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." 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."
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." 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: "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."
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,
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," could not feel
that servile fear of punishment.
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