TO LIVE IN BEAUTIFUL FEAR Fr. Peter Kavanaugh
“Fear seized them all, and they glorified God” (Luke 7:16).
I doubt that there is a biblical concept harder for modern man to grasp than the “fear of God.” It is often glossed-over as simply meaning awe, but that is not satisfying. What does awe mean in the first place, or to be seized by awe? Does the word fear imply something not found in awe? I believe so. A funeral procession was leaving the city when it encountered Christ. It is a dark moment. Christ has healed a lot of wounded people, but this miracle would be unique. It is so piercingly bleak and heartrending: a young boy lies dead in an open coffin. He was in the flower of his youth, young, sprightly, promising, and hopeful. Now he is pale and lifeless. His mother is weeping, a widow, alone, and abandoned. This procession parallels closely our modern, nihilistic culture – a society of death. You can always evaluate the amount of despair in a culture by its degree of hedonism. The catch phrase, “sex, drugs, and rock’n’roll,” is not a sign of jubilation. It is an indication of depression, a culture so hurt and empty that its youth are desperate to escape reality. It is an antiquated phrase now — so “1960s.” We have moved farther down the rabbit hole. I heard recently that there is hardly any punk scene anymore. This is a tragedy. The punks, with their mohawks and “screamo,” represented the psyche of our culture, which recognized that something was wrong. With their drums and guitars, they were crying out for life, for meaning, in a world that had become plastic. Today, however, there are no more punks, or very few. The punk scene is phasing out. What happened? Younger generations are too successfully distracted now to make good punks; they are too buried in their iPhones and social media. We have our drugs. We do not need to feel anymore.
This is the scene into which Jesus Christ walks – despair. Then what happens? “He came forward and touched the bier, and the bearers stood still. And he said, ‘Young man, I say to you, rise!’ ‘The dead man sat up and began to speak, and Jesus gave him to his mother. Fear seized all of them” (Luke 7:14–16). “Thus says the Lord God to these bones: Behold, I will cause breath to enter you, and you shall live. And I will lay sinews upon you, and will cause flesh to come upon you . . . and put breath in you, you shall live, and you shall know that I am the Lord” (Ezekiel 37:5–6). Christ touched death and breathed into death life. The boy rose from the dead. The mother woke from her stupor, her grief became joy, and her despair became wonder. “Fear seized them all, and they glorified God” (Luke 7:16). What is this fear? We have seen what despair looks like? That funeral procession embodied it, but all that changed. They were seized with fear and overwhelmed with worship. This is the new life Christ brought to the world. Ἔλαβεν δὲ φόβος πάντας καὶ ἐδόξαζον τὸν Θεὸν They were seized with φόβος. The Ancient Greeks believed φόβος (fear) to be a deity, and the son of Ares, god of war. They associated φόβος with aversion, the desire to run away when faced with death. The same word took on a new meaning with time, similar, but totally different – awe, reverence, and wonder. We like to say these words, but we may understand them less than the word fear. Our world today is obsessed with comfort. We do not like mystery so much. We want everything spelled out, with a warning label, and easily accessible. We want to feel in control. But φόβος, fear of God, has nothing of this. Awe is closer to
The Word
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