Most Catholics, in preparation for the Sacrament of Confirmation, memorized the “Seven Gifts of the Holy Spirit.” I say “memorized” them because I suspect that very few could explain them, and even fewer may have subsequently thought about them as what they received when they were “sealed with the Gift of the Holy Spirit.”
One of those gifts used to be called “the fear of the Lord.” In fact, if you look at the Catechism of the Catholic Church (1831), it’s still called “the fear of the Lord.”
If you deal with the U.S. catechetical establishment, however, you’ll often see that gift renamed as “wonder and awe.” I assume that the editors of these catechisms think they are making that particular gift more intelligible and less frightening to people. I’m not so sure.
What is “fear of the Lord”? Does God want us to be scared of him?
No.
On the other hand, Proverbs (9:10) tells us, “The fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom.” That means we should explain what both “wisdom” (another gift of the Holy Spirit) and “fear of the Lord” are.
Wisdom from a biblical perspective has nothing to do with book learning. Wisdom is about knowing how to live rightly and well . . . and since we can do neither without living in right relationship to God, wisdom has to be related to God.
The biblical opposite of “wisdom” is “foolishness.” “The fool has said in his heart, “there is no God’” (Ps. 14:1). In short, the fool lives his life as if God did not exist, the wise man as if he does.
God loves us, but God is not just an “old buddy and pal.” God is God . . . and we are not. So one of the things “fear of the Lord” (and its allied gift, piety) teaches us is to recognize that there is an unbridgeable qualitative difference between Creator and creature, God and me.
In the Old Testament, whenever holy men first encounter God, their reaction is fear. Isaiah, for example (ch. 6), has a vision of God and says, “Woe is me!” Elijah hides his face when he recognizes God’s whisper outside the cave. And when Peter recognizes in his miraculous catch of fish who Jesus is, he tells him, “Depart from me, for I am a sinful man.”
That “fear” comes from a recognition of the disparity between the Thrice-Holy God and us. It comes from an awareness that we are sinners. But that is not the “fear of the Lord” as a gift of the Holy Spirit.
Yes, “fear of the Lord” recognizes the dissonant gap between God and me. But it also recognizes two other things: that God loves me, and that he wants to save me.
Fear that drives me from God is not of God. Fear that separates me from God is not from God. Yes, that awareness enters into our relationship with God, but if that is all there is, it is not from him.
The German Lutheran theologian Rudolf Otto spoke of God as the mysterium tremendum et fascinans. God is the “great” or “tremendous mystery” in the sense that we are aware of how different and inferior to him we are—not just because we are creatures (God, after all, made us creatures), but because we are sinners (which is our own doing). It is that dissonance that makes us want to flee.
But at the same time, God is the “fascinating mystery,” the mystery that attracts and interests us, that somehow makes us want to stay. Isaiah recognized his sinfulness—but stayed, asking to be converted. Peter recognized his sinfulness—and would sin even more—but stayed, ready to get up when he fell down. God fascinated them. He filled them with “awe and wonder.”
That’s what the gift of “fear of the Lord” or “wonder and awe” is all about. It holds those two poles together: an awareness of how we don’t measure up to God, especially by our own sinful doing, but also how we are attracted to God and want to remain with him. The solution is not flight, but conversion. “Fear of the Lord” (and the accompanying gift of piety) makes us want to change so that we are what God wants us to be.
“Fear,” especially to modern man, can have a paralyzing, even an alienating effect. If that’s what “fear of the Lord” means to people, they’re wrong. God, who repeatedly tells people throughout the Bible, “Be not afraid!”, does not want to drive us from himself.
He wants us to recognize his glory, to experience the awe and wonder of him who loves us in our lowliness. That’s why, perhaps, “awe and wonder” might better capture what this gift is about.
. . . but with one caveat: “Awe and wonder” is about who God is. An “awe and wonder” that downplays the significance of how we do not measure up, of the dissonance between the All-Holy God and us, is distortive. Holding “fear” and “fascination” together is essential, and the bridge is conversion.
Whatever causes us to lose a sense of sin is also not from God. Salvation is not cheap, and we needed and need to be saved. Conversion is an ongoing aspect of the life of the Christian, because “be ye perfect as my heavenly Father is perfect” (Matt. 5:48) is a mandate for a lifetime, not a one-moment thing. It’s driven not by fear, but by love: Because love is dynamic, there’s no point where “I love you enough.” The drive to change comes precisely from fascination with, awe and wonder at, the beloved.
How much more true is that when the beloved is God?
(With acknowledgment to Fr. David Whitestone for the initial idea for this essay).