- Feb 5, 2002
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Terror of God is not the whole story here
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.
Continued below.
What We Mean by ‘Fear of the Lord’
Terror of God is not the whole story here. To understand this odd ‘gift’ of the Holy Spirit, we need to dig deeper into what the Church means by it.
