For those of us who have received the sacrament of Confirmation, on that day, we received the seven Gifts of the Holy Spirit. One of those seven gifts was, of course, Fear of the Lord. (I shall leave the other six gifts as a review for you to research on your own.)
Fear of the Lord is the gift of perfect love for our Father in Heaven. Catholic theology has always made a distinction between two different types of fears of the Lord. There is servile fear of the Lord, and there is filial fear of the Lord.
Servile fear of the Lord is a fear based upon punishment. It is the fear that a servant has of his master. For us creatures, who serve a divine master, it is, essentially, the fear of Hell. This servile fear is what leads to imperfect contrition for our sins; to imperfect sorrow for the times we have offended our heavenly Father. This is why Christ left us the sacrament of Confession, so that when our contrition is imperfect, the guilt for those sins can still be forgiven, and we can still be reconciled with our Father in Heaven. This is how much God loves us, how much He wants to be reconciled with us. As long as we make the slightest bit of effort to change our sinful ways, He is right there ready to forgive us.
Filial fear of the Lord is very different. That is a fear based upon love. As its name suggests, it is the fear that a son has of his parents. The Latin word for son is fílius. When a son looks into his parents’ eyes, his greatest fear is not that he will see anger there. His greatest fear is that he will see disappointment there. That filial fear is just and right and perfect, because it is based upon his love for his parents. He does not fear getting punished by them, but he does fear letting them down, because when a son sees disappointment in his parents’ eyes, he knows that he has done something far worse than anger them, he knows that he has hurt them. He knows that he has hurt them by his actions and that knowledge hurts his own heart more than any spanking could ever hurt his behind. That is what I mean by fear based upon love.
Filial fear of the Lord is the gift that we received on the day of our Confirmation, that our love for our Father in Heaven may be perfect, that our contrition for sins may be perfect, that our sorrow may be truly heartfelt and based upon our love for Him rather than our fear of His punishments. That gift of the Holy Spirit gives us the ability to look into the face of God and see His disappointment at our sinfulness. That knowledge of His disappointment with us is what should break our hearts, what should lead us to the sacrament of Confession and to reconciliation with our Father in Heaven.
In this new year, let us remember that we belong to the supernatural family of God, that we have a perfect, loving Father in Heaven, and that our natural families are called to imitate the love of the Holy Family. Love requires obedience. In Sirach we hear that “he who obeys his father brings comfort to his mother” (Sir 3:7). In Colossians we hear, “[w]ives, be subordinate to your husbands, as is proper in the Lord” (Col iii, 18), and “[c]hildren, obey your parents in everything, for this is pleasing to the Lord” (Col iii, 20). And in the gospel of Luke, we see Mary and Joseph being obedient to the law of Moses, being faithful to their vocation as Jewish parents. These are just a few examples from Scripture where we are shown how to love.
Holy obedience is a vow taken by every priest and religious in order to help us overcome our pride and selfishness. It leads to humility, which is the virtue opposed to the vice of pride. We all contend with pride, vanity, and selfishness every day of our life. And we all know that those things are opposed to the virtue of Charity, opposed to the virtue of Love; which is why the Scriptures always couple love with obedience: “By this we know that we love the children of God, when we love God and obey his commandments” (I John 5:2); “And being found in human form he humbled himself and became obedient unto death, even death on a cross” (Philippians 2:8). What greater sign of love is there than that obedience?
The Holy Family, the perfect model of familial love, was also the perfect model of obedience. Joseph was obedient to God by listening to the angel and accepting Mary to be his wife. Mary was obedient to the Lord in her fiat. And Jesus was obedient to His mother and His foster father, Joseph. This is the kind of obedience that we are called to within our own families: husbands called to be obedient to the Lord in everything, which means constantly striving for holiness, striving for virtue, and making sure that every decision is based upon prayer and in accord with the will of God; wives called to be subject to their husbands, because of their husband’s God-given authority; and children called to be obedient to their parents, because of their parents’ God-given authority.
However, those in authority cannot expect obedience, if they are not obedient themselves to the authority over them. Children learn obedience from their parents, so if their parents do not obey the will of God, then they cannot expect that their children will be obedient to them. Impious children come from impious parents, and pious children come from pious parents.
It is the parents’ duty — most especially the father’s — to sanctify their family, their spouse and children. Just as Joseph and Mary taught Jesus the ways of their Faith, so are parents today called to teach their children the ways of their Faith. This is, in fact, what they promised on the day of their children’s Baptism. The priest said to them, “You have asked to have your children baptized. In doing so you are accepting the responsibility of training them in the practice of the faith. It will be your duty to bring them up to keep God’s commandments as Christ taught us, by loving God and our neighbor. Do you clearly understand what you are undertaking?” (Rite of Baptism for Children). To which they responded before God, before their family and friends, and before their minister, “We do.” We do understand that in order to train our children in the practice of the faith, we, too, must practice the faith. We do understand that in order to bring up our children to keep God’s commandments, we, too, must keep God’s commandments. We do understand that in order to teach our children to love God and our neighbor, we, too, must love God and our neighbor. That is the vocation of fatherhood and motherhood, to sanctify our families. We do this by imitating the Holy Family, that ours, too, may be a holy family. It is not an easy vocation. It is one that requires a lot of prayer and fasting, a lot of grace and mercy, a lot of love and sacrifice.
When fathers and mothers fail in their vocation, when they give in to sin and temptation, temptations to anger, temptations to lust, temptations to laziness, they should never neglect to seek forgiveness, forgiveness both from their families and from our God. For that is a sure sign of humility and sanctity, and it is the example we are called to give to our children.
When we sons and daughters are faced with parents who have failed in their vocation, who have made mistakes, we should never neglect to extend forgiveness. For only our Father in Heaven is perfect. Only He can love with a love that never fails. Only He can keep every promise He makes. Our earthly parents can only do their best to imitate Him amidst all their human weaknesses and failings. Those same human weaknesses and failings that we have.
If we wish our earthly parents to be as perfect as our heavenly Father, then we must strive to be sons who are as perfect as the Son; the Son who was perfectly obedient to the will of His Father, obedient even unto death, death on a cross. When we are this perfectly obedient, then we can expect perfect parents. For our part, forgiveness is the first step toward imitating this perfect Son, this perfect love.
© Copyright 2002 Catholic Exchange
(Fr Augustine H.T. Tran attended seminary at the North American College in Rome, Italy and was ordained to the priesthood in 1998. He serves in the Archdiocese of Atlanta, and is currently in residence at St. John Catholic Church in McLean, Virginia, while he completes a Canon Law Degree at Catholic University of America in Washington, DC. He may be contacted via e-mail at [email protected].)
