Easter 2026 - Reading #1 - Fear of the Lord
Reading
Thomas Aquinas teaches that the fear of the Lord is the foundation and beginning of the gifts of the Holy Spirit: "The fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom, not as though it were itself wisdom, but because it is the first step toward wisdom. Fear of the Lord is a gift of the Holy Spirit whereby we are moved to a reverential awe before God's majesty. It does not signify the servile fear that dreads punishment, but the filial fear that dreads separation from the beloved."
Aquinas distinguishes between types of fear with characteristic precision: "Servile fear regards God as a master who punishes; filial fear regards God as a father from whom one dreads to be separated. The gift of fear principally regards God, whose offence it shuns, and in this way it is a kind of reverential submission to God. Secondarily, it regards whatever may lead to the offence of God, and draws back from it."
For Aquinas, the gift of fear is not opposed to love but is love's companion, the natural response of a creature who has glimpsed the infinite and knows that to be cut off from that infinite goodness would be the greatest possible loss. It is the beginning of all the gifts because it opens the soul to receive everything that follows.
Reflection
The tomb is empty. The stone is rolled away. Alleluia has returned to our lips after the silence we endured after the crucifixion. We celebrated Easter, the feast of feasts, the day death was defeated, and now we begin a new journey. For the next forty-eight days, from this Tuesday after Easter through Pentecost Sunday, we will walk through the seven gifts of the Holy Spirit, ascending from their foundation to their crown.
We begin, as all things must begin, with the fear of the Lord. This may seem an odd starting point for an Easter season, should we not begin with joy? But Aquinas understood that joy without reverence is shallow, and that the deepest joy is born from the deepest awe. The disciples who encountered the risen Christ did not merely smile. They fell to their knees. They were terrified. They were overwhelmed. The resurrection was not a pleasant surprise; it was the invasion of the infinite into the finite, and the proper first response to the infinite is trembling.
If the Lenten journey was a pilgrimage of stripping away, of ashes, fasting, and honest self-examination, this Easter journey is one of building up. The Holy Spirit does not leave us empty; he fills us with gifts. But the first gift is the one that keeps all the others honest: the reverential awe that says, "I am in the presence of something, Someone, infinitely greater than myself." This is not cowering fear. It is the holy amazement of a child discovering the ocean. Let us begin here, on our knees, astonished that the grave could not hold him.