Last time in this space, we talked a bit about what the Fear of the Lord is not: It is not servile or cringing fear. This is news to a lot of people in our culture — and not all of them are non-Catholics.
Still and all, it is true, and the proof of it is seen in the most perfect lover of God the Father: namely, God the Son. Jesus feared the Lord, but he did not cringe before him. Rather, he held him in awe and majesty and adored him as Abba. How could he both fear and love God?
This puzzles moderns, but there is ancient wisdom in it — and the wisdom of childhood. One of the curious things about the way we are made is that very similar physiological reactions can accompany profoundly different emotions. The same flutter in the diaphragm, sweaty palms and clammy skin that greet the words “You have cancer” can also accompany us the first time we say, “I love you.”
And so, curiously, the same sensations that accompany awe and ecstasy also accompany the experience of fear.
We see this not merely in what are commonly thought of as “religious experiences,” but in almost any situation of being confronted by wonder or great reverence or simply being in the presence of something that communicates immense beauty or power. So, as children, we might have experienced something like fear if we were brought into the presence of a hugely admired sports superstar. Untold millions of people have experienced it standing under clear skies on a summer night, looking up at the Milky Way. A visit to the Rocky Mountains can call it out of us. It can even (or perhaps especially) be encountered in stories for children, as in this scene from The Wind in the Willows, when Mole and Rat encounter the Piper at the Gates of Dawn:
‘This is the place of my song-dream, the place the music played to me,’ whispered the Rat, as if in a trance. ‘Here, in this holy place, here if anywhere, surely we shall find Him!’
Then suddenly the Mole felt a great Awe fall upon him, an awe that turned his muscles to water, bowed his head, and rooted his feet to the ground. It was no panic terror—indeed he felt wonderfully at peace and happy—but it was an awe that smote and held him and, without seeing, he knew it could only mean that some august Presence was very, very near. With difficulty he turned to look for his friend and saw him at his side cowed, stricken, and trembling violently. And still there was utter silence in the populous bird-haunted branches around them; and still the light grew and grew.
Perhaps he would never have dared to raise his eyes, but that, though the piping was now hushed, the call and the summons seemed still dominant and imperious. He might not refuse, were Death himself waiting to strike him instantly, once he had looked with mortal eye on things rightly kept hidden. Trembling he obeyed, and raised his humble head; and then, in that utter clearness of the imminent dawn, while Nature, flushed with fullness of incredible colour, seemed to hold her breath for the event, he looked in the very eyes of the Friend and Helper; saw the backward sweep of the curved horns, gleaming in the growing daylight; saw the stern, hooked nose between the kindly eyes that were looking down on them humourously, while the bearded mouth broke into a half-smile at the corners; saw the rippling muscles on the arm that lay across the broad chest, the long supple hand still holding the pan-pipes only just fallen away from the parted lips; saw the splendid curves of the shaggy limbs disposed in majestic ease on the sward; saw, last of all, nestling between his very hooves, sleeping soundly in entire peace and contentment, the little, round, podgy, childish form of the baby otter. All this he saw, for one moment breathless and intense, vivid on the morning sky; and still, as he looked, he lived; and still, as he lived, he wondered.
‘Rat!’ he found breath to whisper, shaking. ‘Are you afraid?’
‘Afraid?’ murmured the Rat, his eyes shining with unutterable love. ‘Afraid! Of HIM? O, never, never! And yet—and yet—O, Mole, I am afraid!’
It is the strangely delightful feeling of being small in the presence of the sublime. Its lifeblood is humility, but it is light years from humiliation, and only somebody who has never experienced such fear would mistake it for servile fear.
It is supremely in such fear that we discover the truth that we are taller when we bow. And it is uniquely human. No animal in the history of the world but one — a human — ever looked up at a night sky and felt wonder, which is at the root, not only of religion, but of science, art and philosophy as well.
It is upon this fact of human nature that grace builds, so that the Jewish tradition takes our experience of awe and wonder at natural things like mountain ranges, spectacular storms, august heroes and the astounding panoply of creation and says, “If creation is this awesome, how much more awesome must the Creator be?” And so Jewish sages formulate one of the most profound insights of all time: “The fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom” (Proverbs 9:10).
This is the sovereign vaccine against a million mistakes in both faith and morals. It rivets the mind on the Creator instead of making us worshippers of creatures that, while wondrous, are still less than us.
It reminds us of St. Augustine’s insight: “Question the beauty of the earth; question the beauty of the sea; question the beauty of the air distending and diffusing itself; question the beauty of the sky. … Question all these realities. All respond: ‘See, we are beautiful.’ Their beauty is a profession. These beauties are subject to change. Who made them if not the Beautiful One who is not subject to change?” (Sermons, 241).
It reminds us of Jesus’ adoring words when “he rejoiced in the Holy Spirit and said, ‘I thank thee, Father, Lord of heaven and earth, that thou hast hidden these things from the wise and understanding and revealed them to babes’” (Luke 10:21).
And it leads us into the counterintuitive realization that Church Tradition is right to say that the fear of the Lord confirms us in hope.
Of which, more next time.
Advertisement
