Of the Fear of God

WORK out your salvation with fear and trembling, says the Apostle (Phil. ii. 12). One of the things that will help us much to chastity, and generally to keep us in the grace of God, will be to walk always in holy fear and circumspection, distrusting ourselves, and having recourse to God, and putting our whole trust in Him. Thus says St. Bernard: In veritate didici nihil aeque efficax esse ad gratiam promerendam, retinendam, recuperandam, quam si omni tempore coram Deo inveniaris non altum sapere, sed timere. Beatus homo qui semper est pavidus (Prov. xxviii. 14)—“I have found by experience that there is no means so effectual for gaining the grace of God and keeping it, and recovering it if lost, as to walk always in fear before God, not presuming on oneself, according to that saying of the Wise Man: Blessed is the man who is always in fear (Prov. xxviii. 14).” And, contrariwise, one of the things that have brought even great saints to miserable falls has been trusting in themselves, and living with little fear and caution. The wise man feareth and turneth aside from evil; the fool taketh leaps in full confidence (Prov. xiv. 16). The fool is bold and self-confident, and for that reason he falls; but the wise man walks in fear, and so is delivered from evil. He who carries a precious liquor in a very brittle glass vessel, and passes by dangerous places where there is great concourse of people, and winds and tempests blow, if he does not know and fear for the brittleness of the glass, will not carry it with much circumspection, and so will easily break it and spill the liquor he was carrying. But he who knows how brittle the vessel is, and is afraid of its breaking, will guard it well, with nicety and care, and so he travels more safely. That is our case. We hold the liquor and most precious treasure of the grace and gifts of God in earthenware vessels, as the Apostle Paul says (II Cor. iv. 7), which may be broken easily and spill and lose everything; and we walk in the midst of many winds and tempests, and where there are many perilous encounters. Those who do not know nor dread this frailty and weakness, live in a false security and easily come to fall and lose themselves; but those who know and fear for themselves walk with great care and consideration how to preserve themselves, and so live more securely; and if there is any security in this life, it is theirs.

How comes it, think you, says St. Bernard, that there are people who have spent their youth in chastity, at the time when they were assailed with severe temptations, and having reached old age have miserably fallen into hideous sins, so foul that they themselves have been shocked at them? The reason is that in youth they lived in holy fear and humility, and when they saw themselves ever so near a fall, they had recourse to God, and were defended by Him; but afterwards, when they were in full possession of chastity, they began to be proud and confident of themselves and think themselves secure; then, when it came to that, they were cast off from the hand of God, and did what it was their own to do, that is, to fall.

The blessed St. Ambrose says that this is the reason why many who served God, and night and day meditated on His law, and crucified their flesh, and kept lusts and incentives to sensuality in check, and were very patient under great losses which they suffered, and very constant under the persecutions which they underwent, in the end have lost all their firmness and high standard of life and come to fall into great miseries; the reason is because they began to trust in their own virtue and holiness and the good works which they did, presuming and resting their confidence inordinately upon them. Thus, those whom the devil has been unable to persuade to the love of manifest vices, or to overthrow by assault of injuries and persecutions, he made softly to fall by lifting them up to presumption on themselves.

Holy Scripture and saints’ lives are full of such examples, and the glorious Augustine weeps bitterly over them. “Many we have seen, and from our elders we have heard tell of many others, who had mounted to heaven and set their nest there among the stars. Woe is me, I cannot think of it without fear, how many of those stars have fallen from heaven! How many that were seated at the table of God and ate the bread of angels have come to desire to fill their bellies with the husks of swine! How many chastities, finer and fairer than old ivory (Lam. iv. 7), have been tarnished and turned black as coals!”

Who will not take fright at that instance which Lipeman relates, of James, a hermit, who, after having served the Lord more than forty years to the utmost length of the most rigorous penance, being now sixty years old, and celebrated for miracles and casting out devils, ended in this. They brought him a girl to cast out a devil from her. He did cast it out. Then they who had brought her did not dare to take her back with them, for fear the devil might cross them on the way, so he allowed her to stay with him. For his trusting and presuming on himself God permitted him to fall into sin. And because one sin calls on and invites another, he did a stupid thing—he murdered the girl and threw her body into a river. Then, to crown all, in despair of the mercy of God, he determined to return to the world and give himself wholly over to that course of vice and sin which so late in life he had entered upon. However, in the end, the mercy of God did not fail him. He entered into himself, did the most rigorous penance for ten years, recovered his former sanctity, and ended a canonized saint.

Who will not take alarm at that other monk, of whom the blessed St. Anthony said: “Today a great pillar is fallen”? Who will not tremble at that? Who will trust in his own holiness, or his saying, “I am a religious”? See how others have fallen, who were better men than you, and had more virtue and gifts of God than you have. The glorious St. Jerome says: “Can it be that you are holier than David, or wiser than Solomon, or stronger than Samson oe Yet all these have fallen; yea, one of Christ’s twelve apostles fell, taught in such a school, conversing with such a Master and such fellow scholars, hearing such discourses and sermons, seeing such deeds of power and miracles! And one of the seven deacons, Nicholas, chosen by the apostles, on whom the Holy Ghost had come down as upon the rest (Acts vi. 1-16), became afterwards not only a heretic, but an heresiarch and father of heretics (Apoc. ii. 6, 15). Who wiil not fear that old serpent? Remember, says St. Jerome, that our first parents fell, and were cast out of the Paradise where they were enriched by the gifts of God and by original justice, and all that through pride. St. Augustine says that the first man would never have been deceived had he not in his heart departed from God by pride; for true is that saying of the Wise Man, since it is the saying of the Holy Ghost: Pride goeth before a fall, and before ruin the spirit is lifted up (Prov. xvi. 18; xviii. 12). Before ruin and perdition there precedes elation of heart.

If these examples of men are not sufficient for you, go on and mount higher; and there in heaven you will find examples of angels who, for pride and presumption, fell from the high estate in which God had created them. Lo, even his ministers were not steadfast, and in his very angels he found matter of reproach; how much more shall they be consumed as by the moth who dwell in tenements of clay, and whose foundation is in the dust. From morning to evening they shali be undone (Job iv. 18-20). St. Gregory ponders weil to our purpose these words of Job. If in that finest gold there was found so much dross; if in the most noble nature of the angels there was no security nor stability, what shall become of us who dwell in tenements of clay, since clay is easily broken, molders, and falls to pieces! How shall that soul not fear; how shall she presume of herself, she who is in a body like this, which of itself engenders the moth, and in ourselves we have the root of our perdition! The comparison of the moth is very just, says St. Gregory, because, as the moth is born of the garment and wastes and destroys that very garment whereof it is born, so in us our flesh is as a garment to the soul, which garment also engenders its moth, for thence proceeds the fleshly temptation which makes war on us; and so man comes to be consumed as by a moth (Job xiii. 28), when the temptation which springs from his very flesh comes to consume and destroy him.

He says very well as by the moth, because, as the moth does harm to the garment and makes no noise, so the moth of this evil and perverse inclination of our flesh, this fomes peccati, this food and incentive of sin which we have in us, does harm without noise and almost without our feeling it, for often we do not see it, nor take any account of it, until the harm is done. But if those angelic and heavenly spirits, who had no body to engender in them this moth, nor to make on them continual war and contradiction and consume them, did not last nor persevere in good, what man shall be so bold as to trust in himself, having within him the cause of his temptation and perdition!

Let us, then, learn to walk always in this fear and circumspection; and as for him who does not always walk so, you may well mourn over him, for he is near a fall. It is not I, but the Holy Ghost, Who says: If thou dost not earnestly keep thyself in the fear of the Lord, thy house will soon be overturned (Ecclus. xxvii. 4). If you do not walk always in fear and circumspection, shunning danger and guarding yourself against occasions, casting off an evil thought at once and forestalling temptation, you will soon fall.

And let no one deceive himself by saying: “Oh, I do not feel those temptations, those motions and dangers that come of conversing with other people and looking at them; those things make no impression on me.” Do not trust in that; the devil seeks in that way to lull you into a sense of security, that afterwards, at the end of some time, when you are off your guard, he may trip you up and throw you to the ground, or rather, down to hell. The saints here remark that, the more favors God does to a man and the more He imparts His gifts to him, the more should that man walk in fear, because the devils are all the more solicitous and anxious to make him fall. He is dainty in his food, said the Prophet Habacuc (i. 16). It is after these men that the evil spirits go; and the devil makes more account of getting one servant of God to fall, one religious who is aiming at perfection, than of many others, men of the world, as will appear by the examples which we shall quote presently. So St. Jerome, in his epistle to Eustochium, exhorting her to look to herself and not be careless in the high state of virginity, says to her: “The higher the state you are in, and the more gifts you have of God, you must not be proud on that account, nor presume on yourself; rather you should walk in greater fear. You are laden with gold, and so should have all the more fear of robbers, and beware of evil and dangerous alleys. Think not to find peace on an earth full of briars and thorns’— Nolo tibi venire superbiam de proposito, sed timorem. Onusta incedis auro; latro tibi vitandus est. Stadium est vita haec mortalis, hic contendimus ut alibi coronemur. Pacem arbitraris in terra quae tribulos generat et spinas? There is no security in this life, but warfare; you have always to stand sentinel. We are sailing on a very rough sea in the frail cockleshell boat of this flesh, surrounded by many enemies, who sniff the air and raise all the storms they can to drown us, never wearying, never sleeping, hoping for some occasion to get at us. So the glorious Apostle St. Paul warns us in the words: Let him that thinketh himself to stand, take heed lest he fall (I Cor. x. 12). Be ever on the watch, keeping a good lookout, and take care not to sin (I Cor. xv. 34). If there is anything that can hold us up and secure us, it is this walking always in holy fear and apprehension.

I have heard one thing told of our Society which makes much to the purpose of what we are saying; I will tell it as I heard it. In the early days of the Society, when Father Peter Faber and Father Anthony de Araoz came from the kingdom of Portugal to Castile—sent by the King of Portugal, Don John III, with -the Princess Doha Maria, his daughter, who was to marry the king, Don Philip I, who was then prince royal—the members of our Society had the run of the palace, and heard the confessions of nearly all the dames and ladies of the court. There were not so many old then as now; they were all in their youth. The world was astonished, and with reason, at what is set down for a wonder in the Life of our holy Father Ignatius: “Such youth with such chastity.” On the one hand they were seen in the midst of so many dangerous occasions, and on the other with such an aroma of chastity about them. This became the talk of the court. They say that the king one day in conversation with Father Araoz said to him: “I have heard said that the members of the Society carry with them a herb that has the virtue of preserving chastity.” Father Araoz, who was a good courtier, answered him: Your majesty’s story is true.” ‘For the life of you, tell me what the herb is.” ‘Sire, the herb which the members of the Society carry about with them to preserve chastity is the fear of God.” That it is which works this miracle; for it has the virtue of putting the devils to flight, like Toby’s fish thrown upon the live coals.

In confirmation of this there makes the saying of the Wise Man: Upon him that feareth the Lord no harm shalt come, for God will preserve him and deliver him from all evil (Ecclus. xxxiii. 1). And elsewhere he says: The fear of the Lord driveth away sin and by means thereof men keep aloof from evil (Prov. xv. 27). Let us, then, always carry this herb with us; let us walk always in this fear; and let us understand that there is no chastity nor sanctity secure but in the holy fear of God. So the Holy Scripture says that we should grow old in it. Keep the fear of God and grow old in it (Ecclus. ii. 6) ; to give us to understand that not beginners alone, but old servants in the house of the Lord, must live in this fear; not only the guilty, who have good matter for fear, but also the just, who have not done anything so much to cause it. The former fear because they have fallen; the latter that they may not fall. Past ill deeds inspire the former with fear; dangers in the future should inspire the latter. Blessed is the man who walks always in this holy fear (Prov. xxviii. 14).