What is the difference between the fear that love casts out, and the pure fear that endures forever?

The answer

St. Augustine says, “One cannot better explain the difference between the two fears, the one which love casts out, the other chaste, which endures forever, than by putting the case of two married women, one of whom, you may suppose, is willing to commit adultery, delights in wickedness, only fears lest she be condemned by her husband. She fears her husband: but because she yet loves wickedness, that is the reason why she fears her husband. To this woman, the presence of her husband is not grateful but burdensome; and if it chance she live wickedly, she fears her husband, lest he should come. Such are they that fear the coming of the day of judgment. Put the case that the other loves her husband, that she feels that she owes him chaste embraces, that she stains herself with no uncleanness of adultery; she wishes for the presence of her husband. And how are these two fears distinguished? The one woman fears, the other also fears … The one says, I fear my husband, lest he should come: the other says, I fear my husband, lest he depart from me. The one says, I fear to be condemned: the other, I fear to be forsaken … But to the loving soul the time moves slowly. Hear her singing, like a lily as she is from amid the thorns; hear her sighing and saying, ‘I will sing, and will understand in a faultless way: when will thou come unto me?’ (Ps. 101:1–2) But in a faultless way well may she not fear; because ‘perfect love casts out fear’ [1 John 4:18]. And when He is come to her embrace, still she fears, but in the manner of one that feels secure. What does she fear? She will beware and take heed to herself against her own iniquity, that she sin not again: not lest she be cast into the fire, but lest she be forsaken by Him.”⁴⁰⁰

St. Macarius the Great says, “I assure you that even the apostles, though they had the Comforter, were not entirely without anxiety. With joy and gladness, they had fear and trembling, proceeding from grace itself, not from the side of evil; but the same grace secured them, that they might not swerve, though it were but a little.”⁴⁰¹

And Maximos the Confessor says, “Fear of hell causes beginners to shun evil. Desire to be rewarded with divine blessings confers on those who are advancing a readiness to practice the virtues. But the mystery of love transcends all created beings and makes the intellect blind to all that is sequent to God.”⁴⁰²

And in the Paradise of the Fathers, we read: “A brother once asked an elder: ‘How can the soul acquire the fear of God?’ He replied, ‘If the soul does not see God, it does not fear Him.’ He said to him, ‘And how is God revealed to the soul?’ He replied, ‘With solitude and distress, and its continual weeping with unwavering longing, saying: “O my Lord Jesus Christ.” If His remembrance is always in your heart, then He comes and dwells in you and teaches you all good deeds.’”⁴⁰³

Fr. Tadros Yacoub Malaty