Wednesday of the Thirty-Third Week in Ordinary Time (2025)

Recently I saw a interesting video of Fr. Moses McPherson.

He is a popular YouTuber and a priest of the Russian Orthodox Church.

He is a skilled, strong man, and it is impressive how good he is at weight lifting.

I learned about him through the Catholic Answers platform, where Joe Heschmeyer was responding to his views on Catholicism.

And actually, Fr. Moses has a lot of good points — things we as Catholics sometimes hesitate to talk about or think are not necessary to mention.

One of them is the call to return to authentic masculinity.

Through weight lifting and physical discipline, he tries to help men rediscover their role and the vocation God has for them.

By building physical strength and learning to sacrifice comfort, he encourages men to build inner strength as well.

This is especially important today, as pornography has become almost a pandemic among young people, especially men. But also many of the Catholics have lost the sense of the necessity of mortification — fasting, discipline, and self-denial.

But there is one problem: his serious misunderstanding of the Catholic Church and her teachings.

What do I mean by that?

In one of his videos, he speaks about something he calls “Catholic fear,” claiming that Catholics live under guilt, shame, and constant anxiety before God — as if our spiritual life were built on terror instead of love.

He describes the Catholic Church as if people obey not out of freedom or devotion, but because they are afraid of an angry God.

But this is simply not true. Catholics are not afraid of God.

Saint Thomas Aquinas teaches clearly about fear and distinguishes two kinds of fear:

Servile fear — fear of punishment.

Filial fear — the fear a son has of hurting a loving Father.

Servile fear is immature.

Filial fear is holy.

In today’s Gospel, Jesus tells the parable of a nobleman who goes away to receive a kingdom and entrusts each of his servants with a mina — a small but precious amount of money — saying: “Do business until I return.”

Two of the servants invest what they received and allow it to grow.

But the third servant says to his master: “I was afraid of you, because you are a demanding man; you take up what you did not lay down and you harvest what you did not plant.”

The first two servants represent filial fear — the heart of sons who trust their master and act with confidence.

The third servant represents servile fear — the fear Fr. Moses thinks defines Catholicism.

But even this servile fear, as St. Francis de Sales says, can initiate conversion.

The third servant sees his master as harsh and frightening, and because of that fear, he fails.

He buries his gift, his responsibility, and his mission.

So let us ask ourselves today:

Which fear motivates me to follow the Lord?

Is it the servile fear that hides and buries the gift…

or the filial fear that trusts, loves, and steps forward with courage?