The Path to Perfect Love

“There is no fear in love, but perfect love drives out fear” (1 John 4:18).

Note from the editor: This article is part of a series on the gifts of the Holy Spirit. Read the articles about knowledge, fortitude, counsel, understanding, piety, and wisdom.

In the first episode of “The Chosen,” Jesus finds Mary Magdalene in a dark and filthy bar in the Red Quarter. She demands that the bartender serve her a drink (“lots of it”), and as he passes it to her, Jesus places his hand on hers.

She pulls her hand away. “Don’t touch me!” she says, and leaves the bar in fear. “Leave me alone.”

But the “Hound of Heaven” follows her. “Mary,” he calls out to her. “Mary of Magdala.”

She stops and turns toward him. “How do you know my name?” she asks.

He responds with Isaiah 43:1: “Thus says the Lord who created you, and he who formed you, ‘Fear not, for I have redeemed you. I have called you by name. You … are mine.’”

Tears flowing from her face, Mary falls into the arms of Jesus, and they embrace.

The Beginning of Wisdom

Due to her sins, Mary Magdalene fears the Lord’s coming and exhorts him to leave her alone. She runs away from him, wanting nothing to do with him. She fears punishment, for she senses who he is—that is, God himself, with the power to bring both death and life (Deuteronomy 32:29) and life through death (John 11:25-26).

Fear of the Lord, cinematically portrayed here by Elizabeth Tabish, profoundly demonstrates for us what the author of Proverbs wrote: “The beginning of wisdom is fear of the Lord” (Proverbs 9:10; see also Sirach 1:27). As sinners, it is our preference to remain in the dark, to remain in the filth of our sinfulness, much like the atmosphere of the bar in the Red Quarter. And, just like Mary, we would rather try to forget our sins than to confront them.

It is truly a grace to acknowledge our sins, which is why fear of the Lord is one of the seven gifts of the Holy Spirit. When grace breaks into our life in the radical way portrayed in this scene from “The Chosen,” more often than not, it is to remind us of the fact that we were not created for this world but for an eternal one. What happens after that confrontation determines whether we will be joyfully united with God in Heaven or terribly sentenced to Gehenna with the devil. This sense of the eternal ramifications of how we respond to grace is the beginning of what we call the fear of the Lord. And, fear of the Lord’s punishment is the first step on the path to love.

To help us better understand this idea, St. Augustine masterfully uses the analogy of a physician, for Jesus is, indeed, the Divine Physician. In his “Ninth Homily on the First Epistle of John,” he writes:

“The fear of God wounds in the same way as a physician’s scalpel: it removes the festering and seems as it were to enlarge the wound. See, when there was festering in the body the wound was smaller but dangerous. The physician’s scalpel appears: that wound used to pain less than it pains now that it is being cut. While being treated it pains more than if it weren't being treated. But when medicine is applied it is still more painful, so that it may never pain once health has been restored. Let fear occupy your heart, then so that it may bring charity; let the scab give way to the physician’s scalpel.” 

Turning Point

When Mary hears Jesus call her by name, she stops running away from him and toward her sinful life and turns, instead, to face him. This turning away from sin and toward a life with God is known as “metanoia,” which is Greek for “repent and believe” (Mark 1:15). Just like our ability to recognize our sinful state, metanoia is made possible by grace.

In the first part of the scene, Mary is unable to turn toward Jesus on her own. On the contrary, her impulse is to run away from him. He must first initiate. On her own, she flees from him and, if he hadn’t continued to pursue her, the weight of her own volition would have carried her away from him. But, when Jesus calls out to her, she stops. This is the beginning of repentance.

The Fear That Endures Forever

Fear of punishment for our sins is the first type of fear, but there is another type of fear that Sacred Scripture speaks of, and that is an abiding fear: “The fear of the Lord is pure, enduring forever” (Psalm 19:10). How can fear of the Lord both be the beginning of wisdom and enduring forever?

To help us understand these two types of fears, St. Augustine provides us with another analogy, this time of two wives. The first wife considers adultery but fears that her husband would find out and condemn her. She longs for her husband’s absence. The second wife is faithful, desiring only to love her husband. She fears, too, but her fear is not that her husband will discover her unfaithful heart. Instead, she fears losing him. St. Augustine concludes, “And when she comes to his embrace, she fears, but in peace. She will be on her guard and she will keep herself from all wickedness, lest she sin again-- not lest she be cast into the fire but lest she be left by him. And what will there be in her? A chaste fear, abiding forever.”

This second type of fear is the fear of falling back into our sinful state. It is the fear that guards against pride, for now that we are reconciled with God, we fear losing him again. We see this fear powerfully demonstrated as the embrace between Jesus and Mary Magdalene. To be sure, she once feared the scalpel of the Divine Physician, but now that she is healed, she fears being sick again.

Perfect Love

Let us not despair if we are in the first camp, fearing the Lord’s punishment. This is the beginning, and grace is at work within us! But let us desire not to stay there. Let’s strive to cooperate with the Divine Physician, to allow him to cut out the dead flesh and heal us. Let us pray that fear of the Lord may abide in us so that we may fear being separated from him, just as the good wife fears losing the love of her husband, for Christ is indeed the bridegroom of our soul.

By cooperating with the grace of these two types of fear of the Lord, we are on the path to perfect love, for perfect love is not achieved this side of eternity. Only when we are eternally embraced by our Creator and our Savior will all fear, both the fear of punishment and the fear of losing him, finally be driven out.

Until then, may our fear of the Lord strengthen us to joyfully echo Mary Magdalene’s response to Nicodemus in “The Chosen”: “I was one way, and now I’m completely different. The thing that happened in between was him.”

Vanessa Crescio is an accountant with Lipic’s Engagement. She earned an MBA from the University of Notre Dame, an MTS from Newman University, and worked in the real estate and banking industries prior to serving in business roles at the parish and archdiocesan levels. She is interested in thinking through co-responsibility in the Church and developing leadership programs to form Catholics to serve the Church with not only their knowledge, skills, and abilities but with the servant heart of Christ. Read more of her writing at FRESHImage, and follow her on Instagram.