No one know what an emotion is. You can talk to philosophers or psychologists or physiologists or neurobiologists, and you will find no common agreement on the definition of an emotion. The culture today is dominated by talk of emotions and actions that are driven by emotions, but curiously enough, no one agrees on what these things are that consume our mental and moral lives.
One theory of emotions that I like goes back to the late nineteenth century and is about as good as anything else you’ll find out there. The theory is named after the American philosopher-psychologist William James and the Danish physician Carl Lange, who each defined emotions as the cognitive perception of physiological experiences. Imagine that you find yourself in a violent confrontation with another person: your blood starts to flow more freely because your heart is racing, your muscles tighten, you clench your jaw and your hands constrict—all these physiological responses happen on instinct, immediately, intuitively. The emotion of anger then takes control of you when your mind (your brain) catches up to everything that is happening to your body. The James-Lange theory of emotion says that there is an immediate, visceral connection between mind and body and emotional experiences flow out of that connection.
I will get back to talking about emotions in a few moments.
The translation we are given of today’s selection from the Letter to the Ephesians is pretty unhelpful. We are told to be subordinate to one another out of reverence for Christ, but a more accurate translation tells us to make ourselves subject to one another because we fear God. What is Paul’s meaning? He means that we need to let go of our selfish desires and make ourselves into servants whose deepest desire is to sacrifice for the good of someone else—anyone else. St. Paul in our second reading today is taking the life of Christ—who though in the form of God did not deem equality with God something to be grasped but emptied himself took the form of a slave—and applying Christ’s life to the life of the family, having already established the life of Christ as a model for the life of a community.
The kind of life that Paul talks about is not easy; to live like Christ you need powerful sources of motivation. You need something deep inside of you to make you want to go out there into the world and make other people more important than yourself, and so St. Paul give us many reasons why we ought to want to live like Christ. He often talks about good things that we want for ourselves as sources of motivation. Paul tells the Christians in Philippi that if anyone wants encouragement or consolation or sympathy or compassion or joy or love, then that person needs to get out in the world and live like Christ.
Today, Paul gives us a different source of motivation: fear of God. Why live like Christ? Because we fear God. Why always make other people more important than we are to ourselves? Because fear of God is a driving force of motivation that compels us to live in love and become an imitator of Christ. Fear of the Lord is a gift of the Holy Spirit, says St. Paul. St. Thomas Aquinas, many centuries later, makes a distinction between two kinds of fear of God: at a basic level we might fear punishment for our sins, but at a more mature level we fear that our sin will separate us from God.
These two forms of fear, says St. Paul, ought to motivate us to make ourselves subject to one another. Maybe my failure to make myself subject to others will get me punished by God, or maybe I know that my failure to make myself subject to others is a sin and my sin separates me from God—so maybe I fear punishment or maybe I fear separation from God. But whether mature or immature, my fear ought to motivate me to live like Christ. The vision that St. Paul gives us is powerful: husbands and wives, parents and children, friends and strangers, bishops and clergy and laity, everyone striving to live like Christ because a common fear of God motivates the choices and actions of everyone who belongs to the Christian community.
The other day, I was reading through a commentary on the Gospel of John and was surprised to learn that fear is also a motivating force in the telling of the Bread of Life discourse. You need to remember that the Gospel of John was put down on paper late in the first century, decades after the life and death and resurrection of Christ. What you see in the telling of today’s Gospel is the working out of a new kind of fear particular to following Christ that must have terrified members of the early Church: that somehow, some way, at some time, they might betray Christ too. These details about Judas and abandonment get put down on paper because no one can make sense of what happened there in Capernaum after Christ gives his teaching on the reality of the Eucharist.
You can imagine those first Christians gathered decades later in community, reflecting on the life of Christ, asking serious questions: Why did so many disciples abandon Christ because his teachings are hard? How is it possible that so many believers would suddenly stop believing and walk away? Or worse, how is it possible that one of Christ’s closest friends would one day surrender him to the authorities to suffer torture and death? What makes following Christ possible? Is anyone at all able to follow Christ or is it only possible to follow Christ if you receive a special grace from the Father? If the Father grants you the grace to follow Christ, what happens if one day the Father changes his mind? Is it possible? What makes me different from any of those other disciples who literally knew Christ and saw Christ and heard Christ and still walked away and stopped believing because the teachings got hard? Will the day come when I myself might betray Christ or walk away from Christ because the teachings get hard, or life gets hard?
Fear is there in the background of our scriptures for today. St. Paul tells us that fear ought to motivate our living like Christ both in the life of the family and in the life of the community. The evangelist puts these details about betrayal and abandonment down in the conclusion to Christ’s central teaching about the Eucharist because the members of the community are terrified that somehow, some way, at some time, they might betray Christ too. What seems clear is that fear is a motivation that ought to drive us toward the Lord, compelling us to live a good life, to the point that fear of God is itself a gift from God, given by the Holy Spirit to those who choose to follow Christ. Maybe that sounds a little dark or disordered to you, but to me it makes a lot of sense—fear keeps us honest, and fear keeps us motivated.
Now, to get back to the fact that no one agrees on what an emotion is. I like the theory that emotions are the cognitive perception of physiological experiences. Emotions are powerful forces in our mental and moral lives and usually if we take the time to pay attention when we find ourselves overwhelmed by an emotion, we will discover that our body is experiencing strong visceral reactions to something that is happening to us: the heart races or gets quiet, breathing quickens or slows down, muscles tighten or loosen, your face becomes possessed by one kind of expression or another. Whether the emotion is anger or joy or guilt or surprise or sadness, there are experiences in the body that tell us something about what an emotion is.
The problem for me is that I do not think I have ever experienced my heart racing or my muscles contracting or my face constricting or my breathing quicken because I fear God or fear abandoning Christ. No one agrees on what an emotion is, but most experts agree that fear is one of the most powerful human emotions. You know what fear feels like when you experience it, and to me that means if we are going to take something like fear of God seriously, we need to ask ourselves how deep our emotional connection to Christ is.
St. Thomas talks for a good while about a different kind of fear that humans experience. He says that sometimes what causes fear is the loss of something good that belongs only to the body or the world around us. You can imagine some simple examples: fear of experiencing pain, fear of losing your house or your car or your possessions, fear of losing money, fear of losing your reputation or status, fear of losing power and influence. These kinds of fears are common enough for most people, and many of us have probably experienced these kinds of fears at one point or another in life—and all the way down, heart and lungs and muscles all responding to the fear that overwhelms us.
St. Thomas says that these kinds of fears are evil. He calls these kinds of fears ‘worldly fears’ and says that when we experience these kinds of fear that means we have a disordered love for the things of the world because fear is always a response to love. If you love something or someone, then the possibility of losing what you love overwhelms you with fear.
The fear that sits there in the background of today’s readings asks us to reflect on what we really love in life. No one likes or enjoys the experience of fear. But fear of the Lord is a gift given to us that helps us keep our love for Christ honest and motivated. You don’t need to agree with me that an emotion is when your mind catches up to the changes that are happening in your body; there are lots of definitions of emotion out there and many of these definitions are good ones. But whatever you think an emotion is, you ought to ask yourself if you have ever experienced real fear of God or losing God—and if you have not experienced that kind of fear, go pray for it, because that kind of fear is a gift of the Holy Spirit.
Homily preached at the Basilica of the National Shrine of the Assumption of the Blessed Virgin Mary on August 25th, 2024.