|
Love and Fear in Christian
Piety
by Plinio Corrêa de Oliveira
According to Church teaching, love and fear
of God are virtues. Since neither antagonism nor contradiction
can exist among the virtues, love does not exclude fear and
fear does not exclude love.
Furthermore, both of these virtues
are essential for salvation. If we cannot envision a saint
without love of God, like wise we cannot envision a saint
without fear.
One could affirm that love is the
higher virtue and that these virtues influence each soul in
different degrees, according to its individuality and the
economies of grace. But, disregarding one virtue under the
pretext of stimulating another-that is, maintaining silence
regarding fear to develop love, or vice versa-usually inflicts
irremediable damage on souls.
Now, there was a time when the profoundly
balanced piety of the faithful held love and fear in proper
perspective, whence both virtues were proportionately reflected
in sermons, art, and religious literature. Later, however,
Jansenism stressed the role of fear to the point of exaggeration
and delirium. In reaction, saints, theologians and preachers
pertinaciously stressed the role of love. As a result, many
treasures of grace, of theological and pastoral wisdom, and
of artistic beauty blossomed in the Holy Church because of
Her most characteristic and best elements which we need not
mention.
In this way, a wise and strategic
maxim was applied: whenever one side of something is exaggerated,
one must accentuate the other side.
Let us bring this principle into focus
and see how to apply it today. Which one is being exaggerated?
Love or fear? It seems modern man sins neither by excessive
love nor fear. Much to the contrary, having forgotten God
and having been impregnated with secularism, naturalism and
indifferentism, he takes no account of God, neither loving
Him nor fearing Him.
Consequently, the solution to this
complete lack of love and fear is to call men to God by attracting
them to one and the other virtue. For fear also brings men
to God: the fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom.
In this regard, religious art can be
of much help. It is a marvelous means of demonstrating how
Our Lord Jesus Christ should be loved and feared.
In the famous Arena Chapel at Padua,
the immortal brush of Giotto left us this mocked Christ, an
admirable representation of the patience of the Divine Master.
His adorable face is barbarously wounded; sacrilegious hands
pull His hair and beard; a crown of thorns, a derisive symbol
of His royalty, is set upon His venerable forehead. But Jesus,
with eyes lowered, seems neither to see His enemies nor to
feel the enormity of the outrage, but rather feels a fathomless
sadness. This is truly the gentle Savior Who suffers everything
for our redemption with a meek and humble Heart.
"Judas, dost thou betray the
Son of Man with a kiss?" Both faces were close to each
other at the memorable moment of this infamous kiss and terrifying
question. Giotto depicts this scene in another painting in
the same chapel. With his low forehead, flabby flesh, grim
look, vulgar nose, loathsomely soft and drooping lips, Judas
reveals an inexpressible infamy in his whole being. Jesus-noble,
infinitely superior, and possessing an ineffable moral loftiness-looks
upon him with a gaze wherein a sparkle of love, rebuke, severity,
and total repulsion can be found. Poor, miserable Judas, who
did not want to open his soul to the love or fear which this
gaze elicited and to which this doleful and pungent question
invited him.
And, because his soul resisted every
invitation to love and to fear, it sank from theft to deicide
and from deicide to despair.
|
|
