Love Quote by Alphonsus Liguori

Liguori is doing something psychologically shrewd: he’s trying to detox fear without discarding it. As a Catholic moral theologian writing in an age when scrupulosity was practically a spiritual epidemic, he knows the kind of believer who can turn God into a surveillance state inside their own head. So he reframes the problem: the danger isn’t fear of God, full stop; it’s fear that outruns trust.

The line hinges on a paradox that works like pastoral judo. He grants the premise of reverence and judgment, then pivots: your “only fear” should be fearing “too much.” That twist is not cute wordplay; it’s a diagnostic tool. It exposes fear as potentially self-indulgent, a way of staying in control by imagining catastrophe, tallying sins, rehearsing punishments. Excess fear becomes a kind of pride: a refusal to believe mercy could be larger than your anxiety.

Context matters. Liguori’s broader project, especially in his devotional writing, is to soften the harsher edges of post-Reformation Catholic discipline without going lax. He insists on total commitment (“all your strength”), then insists that this commitment must be fueled by confidence, not panic. The subtext is a recalibration of the believer’s inner economy: fear has a place, but it can’t be the engine. Love and trust are meant to do the heavy lifting, because a God who is only terrifying is a God you obey for self-protection, not a God you actually “please.”