Holy Awe

A follow up to my sermon on Sunday.
 
From the words of mystic & saint Julian of Norwich:

Love and [reverent] dread are brothers, and they are rooted in us by the goodness of our maker, and they shall never be taken from us without end...

That dread that makes us hastily flee from all that is not good and fall into our lord’s breast, as the child in the mother’s bosom, with all our intention and with all our mind—knowing our feebleness and our great need, knowing his everlasting goodness and his blissful love, only seeking into him for salvation, clinging to him with seker [secure] trust—that dread that induces this werking in us, it is natural and gracious and good and true. And all that is contrarious to this, either it is wrong, or it is mixed with wrong. (excerpts from Chapter 24 of Julian's Gospel: Illuminating the Life & Revelations of Julian of Norwich (Maryknoll, NY: Orbis Books, 2013, 2014))

Instead of reverent dread, I prefer the term "Holy Awe," which also works and carries for me a more positive connotation.