Sirach 1:12
To fear the Lord is the beginning of wisdom;
she is created with the faithful in the womb.
There's fear and there's fear. Not all fear is the "fear of the Lord." Indeed, the Gospel comes, in part, to cast out a certain sort of fear: cringing, crawling servile fear. Jesus feared the Lord, but He never cowered before His Father. On the contrary, His courage has been the model of the courage of all the saints. There is a confidence, a free and easy step, in the stride of the saints that is in sharp contrast to the craven cowardice of the rat-faced little bureaucrats of atheistic totalitarian regimes who began with bold promises to liberate us from the fear of God and ended in lickspittle prostration before the terrors of Mao, Hitler, and Stalin. For the fear of God is the awe and reverence due what is truly good, not a mere cowering in the face of Power. Never was God more to be feared than in the hour He hung helpless and powerless on a Cross. That same goodness, now invested with all power and authority, will judge us. But He will do so with mercy. Let us fear Him lest we become like someone other than He.
