Admonition XXVII: Virtue puts vice to flight (5)
'Where there is fear of the Lord to guard an entrance there the enemy cannot find place to enter.' To fear the Lord means to stand in awe before God. Fear of the Lord implies reverence, an acknowledgment that God is other than us, our Creator, the Person on whom we depend for everything. The fear of the Lord, that is wisdom [Job 28:28]. The enemy driven out by fear of the Lord is the enemy or temptation that would make us self centred, proud with a sense of self-sufficiency. Francis retained a sense of reverence, of fear of the Lord during his whole life because it was this experience of a fear of God that he felt when meeting the leper. It is informative then to see how Francis began his prayers. For example, he wrote Praises of God that begin: 'You are holy Lord God Who does wonderful things. You are strong. You are great. You are the most high. You are the almighty king. You holy Father, King of heaven and earth'. This reverence for and awe of God led Francis to reverence everything on earth that spoke to him of God. It lies behind his ability to have wild animals sense in him a union with their Creator, it made him reach out to all people and even go to the court of the Sultan who was at war with the Christian armies. It led him to reverence even a scrap of parchment on which no words had been written, and above all, it led him to a wonderful reverence for the Eucharist and the presence of the Lord among us in this Eucharist.
