Office of the Readings for Thursday, Second Week in Lent

From a treatise on the psalms by Saint Hilary, bishop

We must begin by crying out for wisdom. We must hand over to our intellect the duty of making every decision. We must look for wisdom and search for it. Then we must understand the fear of the Lord.

"Fear" is not to be taken in the sense that common usage gives it. Fear in this ordinary sense is the trepidation our weak humanity feels when it is afraid of suffering something it does not want to happen. We are afraid or are made afraid, because of a guilty conscience, the rights of someone more powerful, an attack from on who is stronger, sickness, encountering a wild beast, suffering evil in any form. This kind of fear is not taught it happens because we are weak. We don't have to learn what we should fear: objects of fear bring their own terror with them.

But fear of the Lord this is what it written: Come my children, listen to me, I shall teach you the fear of the Lord. The fear of the Lord has then to be learned because it can be taught. It does not lie in terror, but in something that can be taught. It does not arise from the fearfulness of our nature; it has to be acquired by obedience to the commandments, by holiness of life and by knowledge of truth.

For us fear of God consists wholly in love, and perfect love, and perfect love of God brings our fear of him to its perfection. Our love for God is entrusted with its own responsibility: to observe the counsels, to obey his laws, to trust his promises. And now, Israel, what does the Lord your God ask of you except to fear the Lord your God and walk in all his ways and love him and keep his commandments with your whole heart and your whole soul, so that it may well be for you.