We are "driven to reflect on the difference between human fear and the fear of God. Fear is a natural dimension of life. Since our childhood, we experience forms of fear that then turn out to be ungrounded and disappear; others come up later which are grounded in reality: they must be faced and overcome through human commitment and trust in God. But then there is, especially today, a deeper, existential form of fear, which sometimes turns into distress: it is born of a sense of emptiness, related to a certain culture imbued with widespread theoretical and practical nihilism". With this thought, as a comment to yesterday’s Gospel, the pope spoke to e pilgrims in Saint Peter’s Square before saying the Angelus. "Before the wide, varied range of human fears added Benedict XVI , God’s Word is clear: those who ‘fear’ God ‘have no fear’. The fear of God, which the Scriptures define as ‘the principle of true wisdom’, coincides with trust in Him, with the sacred respect of His authority on life and on the world". (continued)
