Is It Better to Be Feared or Loved?

[00:00:00]Welcome to " Morning Prayer," your daily call to prayer.

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[00:00:11]Greetings to everyone.

[00:00:12]Welcome to your morning prayer.

[00:00:13]My name is Father Brad Doyle, and today is July 19th, the 16th Sunday in Ordinary Time.

[00:00:18]Let's pray. In the name of the Father, and the Son, and the Holy Spirit. Amen. O Jesus, through the Immaculate Heart of Mary, I offer You my prayers, works, joys and sufferings of this day for the intentions of Your Sacred Heart, in union with the holy sacrifice of the Mass throughout the world, for the salvation of souls, the atonement of sins, the unity of all Christians, and especially for the intentions of the Holy Father for this month.

[00:00:45]Amen. In the name of the Father, and the Son, and the Holy Spirit. Have you ever heard someone called Machiavellian? This is an adjective. This man is a Machiavellian. This comes from the name of Machiavelli, who wrote a work called The Statesman.

[00:01:03]Machiavellian means someone who prefers to be feared rather than loved.

[00:01:08]This comes from a quote from "The Sovereign."

[00:01:12]I chose this to show the contrast with how God treats us. God is not Machiavellian. He prefers to be loved. In The Republic, Machiavelli says that it is much safer to be feared than loved, because love is supported by the bond of duty, which, due to the baseness of people, is broken at the slightest opportunity for their own benefit. But fear holds you back because of the fear of punishment that never goes away.

[00:01:44]OK. Here I see a despair in human nature. He says, look, love binds someone through duty, or if you love someone, you are obligated to do good for them. Whereas fear is like self-preservation. This is not about anything else. This is about self-preservation. In our faith, there are two different ways of repentance.

[00:02:20]This is perfect contrition for sins and imperfect contrition.

[00:02:23]God desires perfect repentance. He accepts imperfect sorrow, that is, the fear of damnation, but He is always working to make us strive for perfect sorrow. In today's reading from the Book of Wisdom, which, by the way, is wonderful. This is one of the so- called deuterocanonical books that we Catholics have. So, if you are Catholic, you have a Catholic Bible, and if you are not Catholic and you don't have one, it is worth getting one, because it is the fullness of truth, right? And the Book of Wisdom is something incredible.

[00:02:56]It's like another Book of Proverbs. Do you understand? And it says there: "But, possessing power, You judge leniently and rule over us with great mercy." "For Your power is always with You." The author of the Book of Wisdom says: “ Look, God, you are powerful, but you seek to judge leniently, and by your actions you have taught your people that the righteous should be meek.” You see how this is the exact opposite of Machiavellianism. This idea that a good ruler must be cruel in order to be feared. But no. After all, God says that a good ruler must be just and merciful. "You gave your children good hope that you would allow them to repent of their sins." And I think it all comes down to one thing. If the goal is power, then Machiavelli is right. But if the goal is communion, then he is mistaken. The purpose of the Christian life is not for God to have power over us. He wants to be in unity with us, which requires love and cannot be based solely on fear. So this should be reflected in our own relationships as well. These were your thoughts for today. If you found them helpful, go to morningoffering.com and subscribe. We will be in your mailbox every morning. This is the day that the Lord created.

[00:04:30]Let us rejoice and be glad in him.

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