True reverence - Fr Faber

What is more necessary to true worship than a deep and calm reverence? Nay, what is more sweet to hot-hearted love than to be hushed and awe-smitten in the presence of the refulgent attributes of God? Familiarity in religion would be a simple impertinence if reverence did not mingle with it. What more familiar than the relation between father and son, yet what love more reverent than filial love? Truly, while it was true reverence which made Peter tell his Master to depart from him because he was a sinful man, it was no true reverence which made the craven men of Gadara beseech Jesus to withdraw His importunate blessings from their coast. But it was reverence, perhaps a deeper reverence than Peter's, which made Magdalene strive to hold the Risen Jesus by His feet, though it was not His will to suffer it. Too often, alas! we mistake coldness for reverence, and stiffness for respect. How sweetly did Jesus reprove that spirit when St. Gertrude complained to Him of one of her nuns who, out of reverence, as she fancied, kept away from a community Communion. "What would you have Me do?" said our Blessed Lord, "these good people tie the bandage of their own unworthiness so tightly over their eyes that they cannot see the tenderness of My Paternal Heart."

All For Jesus