is a fear of His judgment which will seal our fate forever; it is the fear of the last judgment and of the tortures of an eternal, non-authentic, unfulfilled existence. In this sense the fear of God is inseparable from the thought of the last judgment. Eastern asceticism advises us to meditate unceasingly on the last judgment, in order to increase in us the fear of God, by which we avoid sin. Just as faith, growing by the virtues which spring from it, undergoes various transformations, so too fear