Pints With Aquinas - Should I Be SCARED of God? | Fr. Gregory Pine, O.P.

Episode Date: November 11, 2023

Father Pine talks about Aquinas' thoughts on the Gifts of the Spirit and the Virtues. How do they differ? How do they help each other? 🟣 Join Us on Locals (before we get banned on YT): https://mattfradd.locals.com/ 📖 Fr. Pine's Book: https://bit.ly/3lEsP8F 🖥️ Website: https://pintswithaquinas.com/ 🟢 Rumble: https://rumble.com/c/pintswithaquinas 👕 Merch: https://shop.pintswithaquinas.com 🚫 FREE 21 Day Detox From Porn Course: https://www.strive21.com/ 🔵 Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/mattfradd 📸 Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/mattfradd We get a small kick back from affiliate links

Hello, my name is Father Gregory Pine and I'm a Dominican friar of the province of St. Joseph and this is Pines with Aquinas. In this episode I'd like to talk a little bit about fear. So fear comes up in a variety of places in our spiritual lives. Maybe we are afraid of losing things that we love. Maybe we are afraid of going to hell. Maybe we are afraid of offending God. So as you can already tell, there's some

bad fears which just aren't in keeping with our Christian dignity, but then there are some good fears, which as it turns out are. So I want to talk a little bit about fear. It's a place in our spiritual life and how we can grow in holy fear. Here we are. Okay, so surprise of the century. I'm going to rely upon the thought of one figure from the Christian tradition who is very wise and who helps us better to understand fear. That figure is St. Thomas Aquinas. Just making myself laugh over here. Okay, so when St. Thomas describes the virtues, he associates them with the gifts of the Holy

Spirit. And, he'll say things like, alright, when you use the virtues, you're working in a human way. And when you use the gifts of the Holy Spirit, you're working in a divine way. It's not like the virtues are imperfect and the gifts are perfect. It's just that the virtues work in a perfect human mode and the gifts of the Holy Spirit work in a perfect divine mode. So one of the images that an author in the 17th century uses to describe the difference, he says basically you're on a little boating trip. It's just it's

a humble boat, okay? It's not like a yacht, so don't be scandalized. So you're on a boating trip, and when you work by the virtues, it's like you're pulling at the oars. But when you work by the gifts of the Holy Spirit, it's like you hoist the sail and are carried on by a divine breath or inspiration. So at each stage of his treatment of the virtues, St. Thomas will associate them with a particular gift of the Holy Spirit. So with faith he associates it with understanding and knowledge. With hope he associates it with fear of the Lord. With charity he associates it with wisdom.

With prudence he associates it with counsel. With justice he associates it with piety. With fortitude he associates it with fortitude. And then with temperance he associates it with a different aspect of the fear of the Lord. So a little bit of a mix-up there, a little bit of a Philly fake-out, where he puts two with faith and then one with both hope and temperance. So he'll talk about fear, specifically in the context of the virtue of hope, which is a really short treatise, but you don't care about that.

You just want to know about the Christian reality. So stop talking about these things, Father Gregory, get to the goods. All right. So St. Thomas will say, all right, fear, what is fear just in the most basic sense? Because all of us experience fear at the level of like an animal or at the level of our emotions or passions and in effect, right, there are some passions which are kind of complex or which are kind of

Yeah complicated on account of the fact that it's not just a matter of see good thing pursue or see bad thing run away It's like ooh, what's going on there? I don't even know and you know dot dot dot So hope is a classic example where you see something. It's a future difficult possible good and you're like let's go for it but with fear we're talking about something that's evil that's menacing or threatening and which as a result kind of cows you into submission you're like right so it's something that's coming after you it's something that's gonna have it out with you. And as a result of which you find yourself saddened, paralyzed, overwhelmed as it were. Okay, but we're not meant to live at the level of our animal life, right, of our emotions or passions. So these kind of responses are called up into our rational life, right, our human life, and

there they are purified, cleansed, youed, perfected, even emboldened. So when we talk about fear here, St. Thomas will say, well let's work our way up to fear in the fullest sense of the word. So okay, yeah, there are bad fears, like what he calls worldly fears, and in this case you're really attached to some good, some good of the world, albeit a lower good, and as a result you're really fearful that you're gonna lose it because that good is probably like your last end. It's probably where you have staked your life, and so if you were to lose it, it would be like the end, you know? So if you're somebody who defines

yourself by the accumulation of wealth or by the wielding of power or by the amassing of fame or by whatever else, right? And that's threatened or menaced, you know, by some obstacle or hindrance, then you're gonna be afraid, right? And as a result of which you're probably gonna act a little bit crazy. So St. Thomas says, yeah, this is not good fear. And a lot of times our fears are of just such a sort because we imagine that something will be the end of us, it'll be the death of us, when truth be told it won't, especially it won't if we have God for our last end. So then St. Thomas will go on to describe good fears, fears which are consonant with or fears which are in keeping with

our Christian dignity. And he'll say we have servile fear and we've got filial fear and in between them we've got what he calls initial fear. Okay, so no real surprises because these adjectives give away the realities, but servile fear is like the fear of a servant or slave, filial fear is like the fear of a son or daughter, and then initial fear is like a mix. So it's kind of on its way towards filial fear, but just the beginning. And he'll associate this with what we call in some

places the mystical evolution or the three ages of spiritual growth or spiritual development of the spiritual life. So St. Thomas uses the words beginner, proficient and perfect to describe those three stages. Roughly that tracks with rooting out habitual sin, growing in heroic virtue, and then kind of mastering the associated gifts of infused contemplation. Now you've probably heard this described in other terms as the purgative way, the illuminative way, and the unitive way. Describing the same thing, just part of different traditions in the church's life. So don't worry about it, just get out the same

reality. Alright, so servile fear corresponds to the beginning, initial fear corresponds to the middle, and then what do we call it? Filial fear corresponds to the end. Maybe that's not the best description, but you get the idea. So what is servile fear? Servile fear is basically a fear of punishment, and then filial fear is a fear of fault. Okay, so in servile fear you're afraid of punishment. So you are afraid of losing something, or you're afraid of suffering some, what, penalty or loss. Okay, and it could be that you're afraid of losing some good, some lower-order good. But in this case, it's not like you have that good as your last end.

And it's not like you fear the loss of it or the penalty or whatever else, you know, punishment inflicted on you as if it were your principle evil. You're just, you know, justly attached to certain things in this world. You know, you've got like a family and you've got a society and you've got a polity and you've got a church, and like there are things that you just don't want changed or you just don't want altered, and as a result of which you're a little bit fearful. Okay, so that's normal provided that you situate that beneath God as your last end, that you hope in God as your last end because He's merciful and omnipotent and because He's going to give you the things that He's promised to give you. Not because He's like the great sugar daddy in the sky, but because He's faithful, right?

Because you can trust Him and because provided you pray for the things necessary for salvation for yourself, devoutly and perseveringly, He's going to furnish you with all you need unto His glory and your salvation. All right? So what we're talking about here with servile fear is like a fear of punishment. A fear of punishment in the sense that we might lose something. It's a something that's lower than God but not in conflict with God. It's subject to God or subordinate to God and yet it's still a fear. Now this fear gradually diminishes as charity increases

in our life and it wholly dries up in the life of heaven because there's no punishment to be feared in heaven and as you grow in charity you're less and less concerned with those lower goods and less and less worried about punishment inflicted because you're more and more engrossed by God and the things of God. So then passing on to filial fear. We said this is like the fear of a son or a daughter, a free person in the household, and here what we fear is fault, the evil of fault. So, whereas in the former case with servile fear, I fear my evil, okay, in this case I fear God's evil. Not in that God can suffer evil, but in the sense that if I commit

fault I commit an offense against God. Now mind you, I'm the one that ultimately loses because it wounds me, right, with a mortal sin, with a loss of grace, with the alienation from that relationship, with other things besides. But it's more so looking to God, to the spiritual beauty which radiates from God, and there's a kind of horror or shame at the thought that I would be guilty of a moral fault or moral turpitude which would stay in that relationship, sully that relationship, and then distance or alienate me from that relationship. Okay, so this is the type of thing which is proper to the sons and daughters of the Most High God, those who enjoy a rich share in God's love and God's

charity. So whereas with servile fear it kind of diminishes as you increase in charity, this type of fear, filial fear actually increases because you become more and more attached to God, you get more and more clear on how very good God is, you get more and more clear on how very bad fault is. That being said, because in your relationship with God you feel more fixed, stabilized, you are less fearful that this fault will actually be committed. But within it, there's this kind of heart of the matter type reality, which would be

like reverential fear, the kind of fear and trembling which is true of the saints and angels in heaven as they come before the Holy of Holies, as they come before the Most High God. There's a sense of our kind of like existential poverty before the existential richness of God Himself. And you tremble, right? You fear by recognition of how very small you are and how very great He is. That's not like, again, you're not fearing punishment. And at a certain degree of charity, or certainly in the life of heaven when you're fixed in the vision of God, there's not really a fear of commission of fault, but there is a kind of recognition like, He's not a tame lion.

He is terrible and good. So we're not meant to domesticate God, and we're not meant to simply say, oh, we're talking about like a kind of sweet, precious, lovely wonder and awe. Like, oh, how God is. It's not that, right? It's not the type of thing that we can even summarize or encapsulate. It's just going to be part and parcel of the experience of God who is greater than our minds and hearts, who cannot be comprehended, who veils himself, precisely so as not to overwhelm us with his glory, because were he to bestow upon us the full measure of glory, it'd crush us, like it'd kill us. So there's a kind of fear that comes with that. And so, as it turns out, you know, fear does abide in heaven, this type of fear.

So servile fear is gone, and then filial fear is robbed or is kind of deprived of any element that might suggest like we could lose this or this could diminish right that's not that's not present anymore but this reverential fear is still present all right and so what we're trying to cultivate in our lives isn't so much like fear as a as a big focus but charity love because this fear actually issues from love so in so far as you love someone you fear the loss of those things which relate you to him or her, you fear the loss of the relationship itself as the primary good in this case. And so you know you talk about in your

preparation for the sacrament of confession, like imperfect and perfect contrition, or what we sometimes call attrition and contrition. This is kind of what we're describing here. This is kind of what we're describing here. This is the evolution that takes place in the penitent's heart. And truth be told, the sacrament of confession, it actually confers the fullness of this type of contrition, this type of filial fear, fear of the Lord. So I shouldn't say that they're the same concept, but they are related concepts. So insofar as you fear fault, right, it begets contrition, which is a sorrow for past sins or a hatred even of

past sins, and like a recognition of their ugliness and of your failure. So the sacrament of confession conveys this upon us. So provided that we bring some contrition, be it imperfect, be it limited, to the sacrament of confession, then the sacrament of confession works to communicate to us the fullness of that contrition. It builds up that contrition or it fills up what is lacking in that contrition. So in order to cultivate this life, we're making good use of the sacrament of confession, we're receiving Holy Communion in a worthy state, we're praying so that the Lord might

stir it up in us, but ultimately we're clinging to him and hope, right? Looking to his mercy, which takes into account his justice, whereby he meets out his punishments, but asks that we be judged, not on account of our many sins, but on account of his precious blood by which we are covered. So yeah, fear, totally cool. Bit of a wild ride. All right, my friends, that is what I hope to share with you. This is Pines with Aquinas. If you haven't yet, please do subscribe to the channel, push the bell, get email updates when other videos come out so that way you can profit from them

too. Also, if you haven't yet, check out God's Planting, which is a podcast to which I contribute with four other Dominican friars. Last Easter we did the seven part series on the gifts of the Holy Spirit. I didn't do the one on the fear of the Lord, but I trust the other four men, so I think you can listen to it and also profit from it. That'll be a longer convo. And then speaking of the gifts of the Holy Spirit, one of them is counsel. Council perfects prudence. I wrote a book on prudence. Incredible, I know, right? You've heard this. So if you haven't yet, check it out, pick it up, read it, and let me know how it goes. And hopefully you have some questions and I can answer them in a future video, or not,

as the Lord sees fit to give me breath and creativity when it comes to the filming of these things. All right, guys, that's it. Know my prayers for you, please pray for me, and I'll look forward to chatting with you next time on Pines with Aquinas.