Thursday, XXVII Week of ordinary Time
(Malachi 3:13-20b)
“Do we have to fear God?” a man asked a priest after Mass one day. When he received a positive reply, the man walked away shaking his head. Perhaps the priest, if he had time to think, might have said more precisely, “That depends on what you mean by fear.” The prophet Malachi gives us plenty of reason to fear God’s punishment. “For lo, the day is coming, blazing like an oven,” he says, “when all the proud and all evildoers will be stubble...” But St. Thomas Aquinas assures us, however, that the more we love God, the more our fear of punishment turns into a filial fear of offending someone so good.
In our age of indulgence many have come to think that an all-good and all-loving God will not punish the wicked. That’s hardly the testimony of the Bible. Both the Old Testament and the New emphasize that those who do evil will pay a heavy price for their deeds. We should fear God’s justice. But this fact alone gives us reason to love God. Being all-knowing and all-caring, He is a scrupulously fair judge who does not punish unnecessarily. Like we would not want to offend a person who has lived with as much integrity as Nelson Mandela, the former president of South Africa, we would not want to cause any offense to God. Here filial fear takes over our fear of punishment so that we always do the right thing for the best reason.
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