Shrine Basilica of Our Lady of Health Vailankanni

The subject of our fear should not be the small number of the elect but the sins that hold us back from not being of this number. You won't at all be condemned because you have been reproved but because you have lived badly. (…) We should fear, always fear, but with the fear that produces wisdom not that which leads us to slacken and despair. It is so difficult to hold people's spirits at an even temperament. Sometimes they do not fear enough, sometimes they fear at just the wrong moment. They go so far as to fear extravagantly that their misfortune comes from God, who is the source of all their good, who desires their salvation. Everything he has done has been unable to persuade them that he wishes nothing so much as to save them. Yet it is an article of faith that God wishes to save all of us and that we can all be saved if we want to. We see the door of heaven, and if we do not see it God would be unreasonable to command us to enter it. In addition, we see very well what it is that enters through this door and what we have to do to enter. Whose responsibility is it, then, that we do not enter? God's or ours?

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Of right fear

Saint Claude la Colombière (1641-1682)

Of right fear

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