On the Fear of Sanctity

[Denise]

On the Fear of Sanctity

May 2002
By David Vincent Meconi

David Vincent Meconi, S.J., is a Jesuit Scholastic in theological studies at the University of Innsbruck, Austria.

G.K. Chesterton touches upon a terrible irony when he writes, "there is nothing that so strikes men with fear as the saying that they are all the sons of God." This statement is terrible because it is true, ironic because there is perhaps nothing more contradictory than dreading our own sanctity. Why one fears his own perfection is nothing other than bewildering. As is often the case, Chesterton reminds us of something we would rather ignore: The familiarity of our own fallenness is more welcome than the grandeur of God. Surely this is why John Paul II began his pontificate by telling the world, "Do not be afraid. Open the doors to the Redeemer." Well, the doors have been opened and yet we fear. Of what are we afraid?

To answer this we need to point out that neither Chesterton nor the Holy Father is encouraging us to be foolhardy creatures with no regard for the truth of things. St. Augustine makes a helpful distinction between what he calls servile and chaste fear. Augustine has us imagine two women, both of whom fear their husbands. One, enjoying an adulterous tryst, fears her husband's questions and dreads that he might someday return home early. Her fear rises from self-love and selfish desire; that if things go otherwise, she might be forced to forgo personal pleasure. The other woman fears out of love for her husband. She fears not her husband's arrival, but his departure. She fears lest their love ever be offended. "The former says, I fear to be condemned; the latter, I fear to be forsaken. Let the like have place in the mind of Christians, and you find one fear which love casts out, and another fear, chaste, enduring forever" (Homilies on the First Epistle of John, IX.6). Whereas servile fear dreads only that which happens to one's own self, chaste fear recognizes the preciousness of communion and the rarity of love and how things could be otherwise.

This is why only true charity can manifest the proper place of fear. What Augustine calls chaste fear is really the inescapable cross of love. It is a fear that accompanies our loving another because it recognizes that we have chosen to live for someone outside ourselves. We are now dependent upon someone whom we cannot, would not, control. This is a sweet and holy fear because it knows the vulnerability of no longer being at the center of things, the risk of no longer living only for oneself.

St. Thomas Aquinas links the Holy Spirit's gift of fear with the virtue of hope. Both qualities are concerned with the soul's movement toward and adherence to God. Aquinas sees this blessed fear as that which accompanies one's awareness of God's otherness, His sovereignty and glory. As such, this fear will not only exist in Heaven but will actually increase and be perfected, as the blessed more and more come to see the supereminence and incomprehensibility of Love (STh II-II. 19.11). This holy fear compels the soul toward God, making it magnanimous and able to see the greatness for which it is made. Servile fear, on the other hand, restricts the soul's ability to reach outward, contracting it and forcing it back into itself (STh I-II. 44.1). It is a fear that breeds mistrust. It is this fear that drove our first parents to hide from their Maker (Gen. 3:10), seeking refuge in the lowest of goods when an entire Garden of Goodness was offered them. One of the "tricks" of the spiritual life, then, is learning how to grow in holy fear as we learn to detect and discard that enslaving fear which keeps us from true holiness.

So exactly how does servile fear impede our life in God? What do we fear about our own sanctity? We fear ourselves. We fear our weaknesses, our pasts, our previous attempts at wholeness, at holiness. We fear that maybe, after all, we are just no good, too hard to love. When we think about the possibility of sanctity, we think we know ourselves too well, when the fact of the matter is, we don't know ourselves well enough! If we really knew ourselves, we would know not only the wretchedness of our own sin, but, more importantly, the goodness and perfection God wills for us. We would begin to know ourselves not as God's rivals, but as His beloved sons.

We fear that in giving ourselves wholly to Christ, we may have to give up some familiar comforts. We fear encountering that "old self." So what do we do? We learn how to show only our good side.

As I look at my own life, I know two things. One, God wills my sanctity (1 Tim. 2:4), and, two, I have a deuce of a time actually believing that. I fear it might be true. I fear that perhaps the things I consider important are, in the end, only dross. I am afraid of giving myself fully because I know that it involves risking that painful absence all widows know. It is a sniveling fear that keeps me at the center of my own life. It keeps me from living completely for Christ in the company of His saints, keeping me attached to those old voices that haunt and prod every now and then: How long can you really live without us?

C.S. Lewis's The Great Divorce is a brilliant allegory addressing the fear we all have in becoming saints. Lewis's tale is centered around a bus shuttling souls between Heaven and Hell, and the decision for God we must all make if existing in Heaven and thus attaining true perfection is ever something we will come to desire above all else. Each soul must overcome the habitual vanity and self-deception it has accrued during its years on earth. Toward the end, one unnamed spirit appears with a pesky red lizard on its shoulder, the lizard clearly standing for the unquenchable sins this figure did not defeat while below. When an angel approaches and asks if he could silence the lizard, which incessantly murmurs promises of pleasure into the spirit's ears, the spirit hopes that there is a way the lizard can be silenced without actually killing it: "I'd let you kill it now, but as a matter of fact I'm not feeling frightfully well today. It would be silly to do so now…. Some other day, perhaps." The angel, however, knows that this day involves all days and only awaits the spirit's permission to rid him of all vestiges of sin and fallen attachments. Better than the spirit on which it clings, the lizard sees how even the smallest trace of lust cannot exist in Heaven and thus makes one last attempt to survive: "Be careful. He can do what he says. He can kill me. One fatal word from you and he will! Then you'll be without me for ever and ever. It's not natural. How could you live? You'd be only a sort of ghost, not a real man as you are now."

Lewis makes it clear that we cannot enter Heaven by halves. One of the first things we must do is abandon those nagging fears that keep us at the center of our own lives. The anxious adhesion to self must give way to the Cross of Christ. Only the Cross can relieve us of our smallness of heart. When we lose hope, and despair of Christ's longing to change our lives, we begin to tell ourselves that the vicious habits and mean-spirited instincts we have fostered for so many years may not be perfect, but at least they are "home." Once we allow God to have complete charge of our comforts and desires, however, we are no longer afraid of losing what is most dear to us. As Lewis shows, the lizard that controls each of us must be slain, and when we allow that to happen, that which once rode us is transformed into a magnificent stallion on which we bound into the Kingdom.

During the 2000 World Youth Day in Rome, banners flew around the city exhorting young people: "Do Not Be Afraid to Be the Saints of the New Millennium." The Holy Father has no doubt tried to resurrect this often neglected language of sanctity, especially with the young who are the symbols of hearts still fervent enough not to settle for imperfection, not to fear the greatness for which each of us has been made. Through prayer, a rich sacramental life, and constant conversion, we come to understand why Christ so often in Gospels tells us to "fear not." Only in asking Christ to show us why and in what ways we fear our own holiness, can we begin to know the life that He has prepared for us from all time: to be the saints of the new millennium, the children of God forever.