The Cause of the Canonisation of John Henry Cardinal Newman

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A Meditation for the Second Sunday of Lent: ‘God’s Holy Fear’

Categorised as Featured and published Saturday, March 7th, 2009
A Meditation for the First Sunday of Lent: ‘Deliverance from evil is … the object of prayer’
A Meditation for the Third Sunday of Lent: ‘Loyalty to God’

Raphael, Transfiguration, c. 1520

In this passage from the sermon ‘Reverence, a Belief in God’s Presence’ John Henry Newman, addressing his nineteenth century Oxford audience, reflects on the proper attitude of the Christian in the presence of God. If Christians are said to ‘fear’ God (we read elsewhere in the text), this is not a ’slavish dread’ but ‘godly awe and reverence’ before their Creator and Saviour. Although believers are granted to see God only ‘through a glass darkly’ in this life, through Christ they are placed in the presence of the ‘infinite and all-perfect’. How can they do otherwise, then, than to ‘maintain reverence in their mode of speaking and acting, in relation to sacred things’? Newman preaches on a text from St. Paul: “We all, with open face beholding as in a glass the glory of the Lord, are changed into the same image from glory to glory, even as by the Spirit of the Lord” [2 Cor. 3:18]:

Though Moses was not permitted to enter the land of promise, he was vouchsafed a sight of it from a distance. We too, though as yet we are not admitted to heavenly glory, yet are given to see much, in preparation for seeing more. Christ dwells among us in His Church really though invisibly, and through its Ordinances fulfils towards us, in a true and sufficient sense, the promise of the text. We are even now permitted to “see the King in His beauty,” to “behold the land that is very far off.” … Isaiah himself speaks in passages which may be taken in explanation of the text: “The glory of the Lord shall be revealed, and all flesh shall see it together;” and again, “They shall see the glory of the Lord, and the excellency of our God.” [Is. 40:5; 35:2] We do not see God face to face under the Gospel, but still, for all that, it is true that “we know in part;” we see, though it be “through a glass darkly;” which is far more than any but Christians are enabled to do. Baptism, by which we become Christians, is an illumination; and Christ, who is the Object of our worship, is withal a Light to worship by.

Such a view is strange to most men; they do not realize the presence of Christ, nor admit the duty of realizing it. Even those who are not without habits of seriousness, have almost or quite forgotten the duty. This is plain at once: for, unless they had, they would not be so very deficient in reverence as they are. It is scarcely too much to say that awe and fear are at the present day all but discarded from religion. Whole societies called Christian make it almost a first principle to disown the duty of reverence; and we ourselves, to whom as children of the Church reverence is as a special inheritance, have very little of it, and do not feel the want of it. Those who, in spite of themselves, are influenced by God’s holy fear, too often are ashamed of it, consider it even as a mark of weakness of mind, hide their feeling as much as they can … They wish indeed to maintain reverence in their mode of speaking and acting, in relation to sacred things, but they are at a loss how to answer objections, or how to resist received customs and fashions; and at length they begin to be suspicious and afraid of their own instinctive feelings. [...]

Now it must be observed that the existence of fear in religion does not depend on the circumstance of our being sinners; it is short of that. Were we pure as the Angels, yet in His sight, one should think, we could not but fear, before whom the heavens are not clean, nor the Angels free from folly. The Seraphim themselves veiled their faces while they cried, Glory! Even then were it true that sin was not a great evil, or was no great evil in us, nevertheless the mere circumstance that God is infinite and all-perfect is an overwhelming thought to creatures and mortal men, and ought to lead all persons who profess religion to profess also religious fear [...].

[An] instance of want of fear, is the bold and unscrupulous way in which men speak of the Holy Trinity and the Mystery of the Divine Nature. They use sacred terms and phrases, should occasion occur, in a rude and abrupt way, and discuss points of doctrine concerning the All-holy and Eternal, even (if I may without irreverence state it) over their cups, perhaps arguing against them, as if He were such a one as themselves. … Is it not quite certain that men would not use Almighty God’s Name so freely, if they thought He was really in hearing,—nay, close beside them when they spoke?

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