Can hope and fear dwell in the same breast? Yes, certainly, if the fear be the fear of God that is the beginning of wisdom. In fact, hope is impossible without that salutary filial fear which fills us with a dread of Offending God. This fear is a reverential, not a servile fear; a fear of love, not of gloomy terror and dismay. We rejoice with trembling, but the trembling does not destroy the joy. All the saints had the fear of God strong within them, and the most intense charity does not drive out fear, except in heaven where it is perfected.
We may go further and say that hope cannot abide constantly in our hearts unless fear be present also. Hope and fear go on hand in hand. "Dost thou not fear God?" said the penitent thief to his blaspheming companion; and as he spoke the words, hope leaped up in his breast, and he turned to Him Who is the fount and source of all hope, and was forgiven and received the promise of a Paradise near at hand. "Fear God, dear Abner, and thou shalt know no other fear," said the French poet; for then all other fear is changed to hope.
The fear of earthly miseries and of the punishment of our sins need not interfere with our hope. We may dread the approaching suffering, bodily or mental, but at the same time time we may have a firm hope that God will bring us safely through. The fear is of the passing present; the hope of the happy and eternal future, and the hope enables us to overcome the fear and to say I can suffer all things through God's grace and with His help. Why then should the shrinking of human nature from the pain interfere with the brightness of our hope?
- text from Beautiful Pearls of Catholic Truth; it has the Imprimatur of Archbishop Michael Augustine Corrigan, Diocese of New York, 6 October 1897