Day 8: The Gift of Fear of the Lord

The eighth day of the Holy Spirit Novena turns to the seventh and last of the Gifts: the Gift of Fear of the Lord. Catholic moral theology distinguishes carefully among kinds of fear: servile fear (the fear of a slave for the master, motivated by the dread of punishment), initial fear (the fear of the convert, mixed with self-interest), and filial fear (the fear of a son who loves his father and shrinks from causing him grief). The Gift of Fear of the Lord, in its perfect form, is filial fear.

Today's invocation

Come, Holy Spirit, fill the hearts of Your faithful and kindle in them the fire of Your love. Send forth Your Spirit, and they shall be created. And You shall renew the face of the earth. Amen.

Today's meditation

The phrase fear of the Lord runs through the Old Testament Wisdom literature as the foundational disposition of the wise person. "The fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom" (Proverbs 9:10). "The fear of the Lord is the beginning of knowledge" (Proverbs 1:7). The phrase has been misread in modern Western religion as meaning a craven, abject dread of God; in the biblical and Catholic theological tradition, the phrase names something quite different: the soul's awareness of the holiness of God and the soul's reverent shrinking from anything that would offend Him.

Saint Thomas Aquinas (Summa Theologiae II-II, q. 19) develops the theology of filial fear at length. The Catholic soul that loves God as Father (the disposition formed by the Gift of Piety, treated yesterday) does not want to offend Him. The Gift of Fear of the Lord is the Holy Spirit's way of preserving the soul from those subtle compromises with sin that would slowly cool the love of the Father. It is the protective wall around the heart's love.

Today's intention

Today, ask the Holy Spirit for the Gift of Fear of the Lord in your spiritual life. Holy Spirit, give me the filial fear that protects love. Make me sensitive to the small compromises that would dishonor the Father whom I love. If you have noticed in yourself a recent insensitivity to particular sins (a tolerance of speech, of imagination, of consumption that would have grieved you in earlier years of fervor), bring it explicitly to the Holy Spirit today.

Reflection

The Catholic spiritual tradition has long observed that the Gift of Fear of the Lord works in inverse proportion to the soul's distance from God. The saint nearest the Beatific Vision has the most exquisite Gift of Fear, in the form of the most refined sensitivity to the slightest disorder of love. The sinner deeply alienated from God has lost the Gift almost entirely. Most Catholics, in the middle range, oscillate between greater and lesser sensitivity. The novena prays for the increase of the Gift, not for a fearful religious anxiety but for the proper Catholic delicacy of love.

A practical sign of the Gift of Fear is the ease with which the Catholic faithful approach the Sacrament of Penance. The soul with the Gift confesses readily, often, and with specificity, because it is sensitive to the small offenses that would diminish love. The soul without the Gift confesses rarely and grudgingly, treating the sacrament as an external duty rather than as the medicine of love. The novena's eighth day is an appropriate moment to consider whether the Catholic discipline of frequent confession has been kept, and to plan a return to the confessional in the days following the close of the novena.

Closing prayers

Pray seven times each: the Our Father, the Hail Mary, and the Glory Be.

Holy Spirit, Spirit of the Fear of the Lord, give us the filial reverence that loves the Father and shrinks from grieving Him.