Transformation in Christ_ On the Christian Attitude - Dietrich Von Hildebrand [98]
Now it is quite right that we should be aware of the helplessness and insecurity inherent in our earthly situation, rather than indulge—owing to a natural disposition in this sense—the thoughtless illusion of being immune against all evils. Nor should we, in stoical obtuseness, refrain from experiencing as an evil what really is an evil. He who faces death in fearless impassivity, although he does not see in it a gateway to eternity but a submersion beyond which there is nothing but the darkness of utter uncertainty, only proves his dullness or his lack of imagination. His incapacity to understand or to respond to the fact that death really and objectively is a terrible thing, is no display of confidence in God or even an attitude that is praiseworthy on natural grounds.
Confidence in God liberates us from fear
In an entirely different sense, however, does the duty to overcome fear confront the Christian. He must integrally take account of the new light that has fallen upon our earthly situation as a consequence of the Redemption. He knows that the inherent uncertainty and forlornness of our natural situation on earth have been dispelled by Christ, who says: “In the world you shall have distress. But have confidence. I have overcome the world” (John 16:33). In the face of death, he will say with St. Paul, “O death, where is thy victory? O death, where is thy sting?” (1 Cor. 15:55). No matter what dangers and menaces may face him, he is aware of their relativity and transitory character, as well as of their character of trial; he feels fully sheltered in the all-powerful love of God, a security which no outward evil can ever destroy.
What confidence in God does to us is not to make us blind either to the evils that threaten us or to the fact of their reality, but to liberate us from the perplexity, unrest, and anxiety linked to them naturally. Confidence in God arms us, then, not with a habit of blunt indifference, but with that supernatural courage which causes us to dread nothing in our struggle for the kingdom of God: that conquering intrepidity which has animated the martyrs.
He who is filled with true confidence in God clings, in the presence of all things that by themselves justly arouse his anxiety, to the supreme reality and the omnipotent love and mercy of God. He never forgets that whatever sufferings and evils he is destined to bear, everything falls beneath the towering reality and the all-wise reign of God, who is infinite love and goodness; that everything is but a phase in the road advancing towards Him; that all dire things are deprived of their venom by Christ, to whom we speak in adoration with St. Francis: “For by Thy holy cross Thou hast redeemed the whole world.”
Why we sometimes succumb to fear
Nevertheless, it is a fact that even convinced Christians, who seek Christ in all sincerity, may sometimes lapse into a state of anxiety which palsies their free response to value. How does this happen?
How does it come about that our souls, even though Christian, may be numbed into a kind of spasm in which they are unable to look at anything except a certain evil, the dread of which fascinates us to the point of caring about nothing but our escape from that evil?
How can we so much fall under the domination of that fear that we stoop to considering everything from this one point of view only? What moved St. Peter to deny the Lord, though only a few hours before he had declared he would follow Him everywhere?
What makes us often, even in the face of minor evils, so preoccupied with the desire of avoiding them as to let this obsession hinder us from responding to high values, so afraid of them as to tell a falsehood or to sin gravely against charity? How is it possible that, having received the message