God arises; His enemies are scattered, and those who hate Him flee before Him.
Ps 67:2
The conversion of the heart begins with fear and finishes with love. If fear did what love should do, wo should have less to complain of – what is so shocking is, that nowadays we have reached that pitch of indifference which is neither moved by fear nor by love, and that the most frightful things do not make any impression on our hearts.
Half-hours with the Saints (Charles Kenny)
The loss of holy fear is the mischief of all mischiefs. For this fear is a special gift of the Holy Ghost, to be sought for by prayer and penance, by tears and cries, by patience and impatience, and by the very yearnings of an earnest and familiar love. It has always seemed to me very and unexpectedly beautiful when in the special office of St Phillip Neri, knowing what manner of man he was, and what peculiar spirit he was of, it says in the antiphon of the Magnificat, “Come, my children, and I will teach you the fear of the Lord,”…for how else shall the saint teach us divine love?
Fr Faber
Let us pass in review before ourselves the ancient patriarchs and their deep awe of God, how they trembled with holy fear when God was nigh, and looked upon all things as unspeakably hallowed over which He has so much as cast His shadow.
Fr Faber
When all mankind are assembled in the valley of Josaphat, the prediction of Our Lord will be fulfilled: Men withering away for fear, and expectation of what shall come upon the whole earth.” For they will be in such anxiety and terror in anticipation of the approaching judgment that, if such a thing were possible, they would faint away. They will look up to the Heavens continually with fear and trembling, and every moment that the coming of the dreaded Judge is delayed will serve to increase their apprehension of this advent. At length the Heavens will be opened, and the sign of Christ’s triumphant victory, the sign of the holy Cross, will be carried down by a host of Angels and exhibited to the whole world.
Fr Martin von Cochem (The Four Last Things)
The powers of Heaven shall be moved, and then shall appear the sign of the Son of man in Heaven, and then shall all tribes of the earth mourn.
Matt. xxiv. 29, 30
AnaStpaul 