Divine Intimacy: Meditations on the Interior Life for Everyday of the Year

[Stone]

119. THE MULTIPLICATION OF THE LOAVES
[FOURTH WEEK OF LENT]

PRESENCE OF GOD - O Jesus, true Bread of eternal life, appease my hunger.


MEDITATION

1. Today there is a pause of holy joy and spiritual comfort which the Church, like a good mother, gives us in the middle of the Lenten austerity so that we may renew our strength. “Rejoice, O Jerusalem,” the Introit of today’s Mass sings, “and all you who love her, leap with joy and be filled with the abundance of her delights.” What are these delights? The Gospel (Jn 6,1-15) answers the question by the narrative of the multiplication of the loaves, the great miracle by which Jesus meant to prepare the people for the announcement of a much more startling miracle, the institution of the Holy Eucharist, in which He, the Master, would become our Bread, the “living Bread which came down from Heaven ” (ibid. 6,41) to nourish our souls. This is the cause of our joy, the source of our delight. Jesus is the Bread of life, always at our disposal to appease our hunger.

Although Jesus appreciates spiritual values much better than we, He does not forget or despise the material necessities of life. Today’s Gospel shows Him surrounded by the crowd which had followed Him to hear His teachings. Jesus thinks of their hunger, and to provide for it, performs one of His most outstanding miracles. With His blessing, five loaves of bread and two fishes suffice to feed five thousand people, with twelve basketfuls left over.

Jesus knows that when a person is tormented by hunger or material needs, he is unable to apply himself to the things of the spirit. Charity likewise requires of us this understanding of the bodily necessities of others, a practical understanding which translates itself into efficacious action. “If a brother or sister be naked and want daily food, and one of you say to them, ‘Go in peace’ ...yet give them not those things that are necessary for the body, what shall it profit?” (Fas 2,15.16). The Apostles had suggested to the Master that He dismiss the crowd “that they may buy themselves victuals” (Mt 14,15). Jesus did not agree but provided for them Himself. We, too, must strive, as far as we are able, to show ourselves solicitous for the needs of others.


2. Before performing this miracle, Jesus asked Philip, “Whence shall we buy bread wherewith to feed these people?” And the Evangelist observes, “He said that to try him, for He knew what He was about to do.” There is no difficulty in our lives for which God does not know the solution. From all eternity He has foreseen it and has the remedy for each case, no matter how complicated the situation may be. However, sometimes in difficult circumstances He seems to leave us alone as if the outcome were to depend on us, but He does this only to test us. He wants us to measure our strength against the difficulty—which makes us more aware of our weakness and insufficiency—and He wants us also to exercise our faith and our confidence in Him. The Lord never really abandons us unless we forsake Him first. He only hides Himself and covers His actions with a dark veil. This is the time to believe, to believe firmly, and to wait with humble patience and complete
confidence.

The Apostles tell Jesus that a young boy has five loaves and two fishes, that this is very little, in fact, nothing at all for feeding five thousand men. But the Lord asks for this nothing and uses it to accomplish a great miracle. It is always thus: the all-powerful God, who can do everything and create from nothing, when dealing with His free creatures, will not act without their help. Man can do but very little; yet God wants, asks for, and requires this little as a condition of His intervention. Only the Lord can make us saints, as only He could multiply the small supplies of the young boy; still He asks for our help. Like the boy in the Gospel, we too must give Him everything in our power; we must offer Him each day our good resolutions, renewed faithfully and lovingly, and He will bring about a great miracle for us also, the miracle of our sanctification.


COLLOQUY

“Lord Jesus Christ, Son of the living God, who, on the Cross, with Your arms extended for the redemption of all men, drank the chalice of unspeakable sorrows, deign to help me today. Poor am I, but I come to You who are rich; in my wretchedness I present myself to You, the All-merciful. Ah! grant that I may not leave You, empty and deceived. I come to You hungry; do not let me go away fasting. Weak, I approach You; do not turn me away unstrengthened! And, if I sigh with hunger, grant me the grace to be nourished ” (St. Augustine).

Yes, I hunger for You, true Bread, living Bread, Bread of life. You know what my hunger is—hunger of the soul, hunger of the body—and You will to provide for the one as well as for the other. By Your teaching, by Your Body and Blood, You strengthen my spirit; You strengthen it abundantly, withholding nothing, except what I myself keep by the coldness of my love, the smallness of my heart. You have set a rich and abundant table for me, beyond anything imaginable, which I have only to approach in order to be fed. You not only welcome me, but You Yourself become my food and drink when You give Yourself wholly to me, wholly in Your divinity, wholly in Your humanity.

In Your infinite goodness, You have even set a table for my body, and Your Providence feeds it, clothes it, and maintains it in life like the lilies of the field and the birds of the air. You know my needs, my pains, my preoccupation with the past, the present, and the future; and You provide for everything with a paternal love. O Lord, why do I not confide in You, why do I not cast all my cares on You, certain that You will find a remedy for all of them? I entrust my life to You, the life of my body, my earthly life with all its needs and its labors, as well as the life of my soul with all its necessities, its pains, its hunger for the infinite. Only You can fill up the emptiness in my heart, only You can make me happy. You alone can bring about my ideal of sanctity— union with You.

120. THE VALUE OF OBEDIENCE

PRESENCE OF GOD - O Jesus most obedient, make me understand the value of obedience.



MEDITATION


1. St. John of the Cross has said, “God wants from us the least degree of obedience and submission, rather than all the works we desire to offer Him” (SM J, 13). Why? Because obedience makes us surrender our own will to adhere to God’s will as expressed in the orders of our superiors; and the perfection of charity, as well as the essence of union with God, consists precisely in the complete conformity of our will with the divine will. Charity will be perfect in us when we govern ourselves in each action— not according to our personal desires and inclinations—but according to God’s will, conforming our own to His. This is the state of union with God, for “the soul that has attained complete conformity and likeness of will (to the divine will), is totally united to and transformed in God supernaturally” (AS II, 5,4).

The will of God is expressed in His commandments, in the precepts of the Church, in the duties of our state in life; beyond all that, there is still a vast area for our free choice, where it is not always easy to know with certitude exactly what God wants of us. In the voice of obedience, however, the divine will takes on a clear, precise form; it comes to us openly manifest and we no longer need to fear making a mistake. Indeed, as St. Paul says, “There is no power but from God” (Rom 13,1), so that by obeying our lawful superiors, we can be certain that we are obeying God. Jesus Himself, when entrusting to His disciples the mission of converting the world, said, “He that heareth you, heareth Me; and he that despiseth you, despiseth Me" (Lk 10,16).

He teaches us here that ecclesiastical superiors represent Him and speak to us in His Name. Furthermore, St. Thomas points out that every lawful authority—even in the natural order, such as the civil and social spheres—when commanding within the just limits of its powers manifests the divine will. In this very sense, the Apostle does not hesitate to say, “Servants, be obedient to them that are your lords...as to Christ. ..doing the will of God from the heart” (Eph 6,5.6).


2. One of the greatest obstacles to full conformity of our will to God’s is our attachment to our own desires and inclinations. Obedience, because it asks us to be governed by the will of another, is the best way of accustoming ourselves to renounce our own will, of detaching us from it, and of making us cling to the divine will as revealed in the orders of our superiors. ‘The stricter the form of obedience to which we submit—that is, the more it tends to govern not only some particular detail but our whole life—the more intense will its practice be, and the more surely will it make us conform to the will of God. This is the great value of obedience: to unite man’s life with the will of God: to give man in every circumstance, the opportunity to govern himself, not according to his weak, fragile will, which is so subject to error, blindness, and human limitations, but according to the will of God. This divine will has such goodness, perfection, and holiness that it can never be mistaken nor will what is evil; it aims only at the good—not the transitory good, which today is and tomorrow is not—but the eternal, imperishable good.

Obedience makes us this happy exchange: renunciation of our own will for God’s will. For this reason the saints loved obedience. It is said of St. Teresa Margaret of the Heart of Jesus that, not only did she obey orders promptly, but she experienced intense pleasure in doing so—her whole aspect expressing the joy she found in obeying. If it is costly to nature to give up one’s own will, to renounce a plan, a project, or a much cherished work, the interior soul will not stop at this act of renunciation, but will realize that by suffering and struggling to overcome itself, it will be carried much further. The soul is fixed in the will of God which comes hidden in the voice of obedience and it tends toward this will with all its strength, for to embrace the will of God is to embrace God Himself.


COLLOQUY

“Oh! how sweet and glorious is this virtue of obedience, which contains all the other virtues! Because it is born of charity, and on it the rock of holy faith is founded, it is a queen, and he who espouses it knows no evil, but only peace and rest. The tempestuous waves of evil cannot hurt him because he sails in Your holy will, O my God.... He has no wish which cannot be satisfied because obedience makes him desire You alone, O Lord, who know his desires and can and will fulfill them. Obedience navigates without fatigue, and without danger comes into the port of salvation. O Jesus, I see that obedience conforms itself to You; I see it going with You into the little boat of the holy Cross. Grant me, then, O Lord, this holy obedience anointed with true humility. It is straightforward and without deceit; it brings with it the light of divine grace. Give me this hidden pearl trampled underfoot by the world, which humbles itself to submit to creatures for love of You” (St. Catherine of Siena).

O Lord, I have only one life; what better way could I use it for Your glory and my sanctification, than to submit it directly to obedience? Only by doing this shall I be certain that I am not wasting my time or deceiving myself, for to obey is to do Your will. If my will is very imperfect, Yours is holy and sanctifying; if mine has only the sad power to lead me astray, Yours can make holy my life and all my acts—even the simplest and most indifferent—if they are accomplished at its suggestion. O Lord, the desire to live totally in Your will urges me to obedience and compels me to love and embrace this virtue, in spite of my great attachment to my liberty and independence.

O holy, sanctifying will of my God, I want to love You above everything else; I want to embrace You at every moment of my life; I do not want to do anything without You or outside of You.

121. COME, FOLLOW ME

PRESENCE OF GOD - O Jesus, obedient even unto the death of the Cross, teach us to follow Your example.


MEDITATION

1. Jesus said to the young man who was aspiring to perfection, “If thou wilt be perfect, go sell what thou hast, and give to the poor,”—the evangelical counsel of poverty— “and come follow Me” (Mt 19,21),—the counsel of voluntary obedience, according to St. Thomas. To follow Jesus means to imitate His virtues, among which obedience certainly ranks first. Jesus came into the world to accomplish the will of His Father: “It is written of Me that I should do Thy will, O God” (Heb 10,7). Several times during His life He said it expressly: “I came down from heaven, not to do My own will, but the will of Him that sent Me” (Jn 6,38); and He declared that His food, His sustenance, the support of His life, was the fulfilling of His Father’s will (cf. ibid. 4,34). But Jesus also wanted to express concretely His dependence on His heavenly Father, by submitting Himself to those creatures who in the natural order had authority over Him as man. Thus he lived for thirty years subject in all things to Mary and Joseph, recognizing His Father’s authority in theirs. “He was subject to them,” the Gospel says (Lk 2,51), as it summarizes in these few words the long years of the private life of the Savior. Later, during His public life, and especially during His Passion, Jesus always gave an example of obedience to constituted authority, civil as well as religious, even subjecting Himself to His judges and executioners and making Himself, according to the words of St. Paul, “obedient unto death, even to the death of the Cross” (Phil 2,8). Having come into the world through obedience, Jesus wanted to live in obedience and through obedience. He embraced death, repeating in the Garden of Olives: “Father...not My will but Thine be done” (Lk 22,42). To follow Jesus in the life of perfection means that we must voluntarily embrace a life of total dependence. St. Thomas concludes from this that obedience belongs to the essence of the state of perfection.


2. To follow Jesus means to carry out fully His invitation: “If any man will come after Me, let him deny himself” (Mt 16,24). Now the greatest act of renunciation that man can make is just this sacrifice of his liberty by submission to obedience in all things. In fact, “nothing is dearer to man than the freedom of his own will, for this is what makes him master over others; because of this freedom, he can use and enjoy other goods and is master of his acts. Even as a man by abandoning his wealth or his kinsfolk renounces them, so by surrendering the freedom of his own will, by which he is master of himself, he renounces himself” (St. Thomas, The Perfection of the Spiritual Life). For this reason the vow of obedience is the greatest and most meritorious sacrifice man can offer to God.

To permit our life to be ruled by another—in this the sacrifice of obedience consists. Every man is free, having received his liberty from God; therefore, he has the right to govern himself according to his own judgment and personal views.! Hence anyone who promises obedience uses his freedom to renounce this right, voluntarily offering it as a free holocaust for the service, worship, and glory of God. As the holocaust of the chosen people was a victim entirely consumed in honor of God, no part of it being spared, similarly the vow of obedience immolates the whole man to the honor of God. Obedience then makes a sacrifice of our being to its depths, or to be more exact, it sacrifices everything selfish in it—our attachments to our opinions, inclinations, and our personal demands. In this sense, nothing helps to free us from love of self, to strip us of ourselves as much as obedience. At the same time, far from destroying our personality, obedience makes use of it in a most glorious and sublime way, by enabling it to surrender itself in order to adhere entirely to God, to His holy, sanctifying will.


COLLOQUY

“O Jesus, You would not have one that loves You well take any other road than that which You Yourself took” (cf. T.J. F, 5). And now I have decided to follow You, to walk in Your footsteps on the path of holy obedience, a way hollowed out in the solid rock of Your example, of Your most humble submission, of Your ineffable subjection. “O God, You who reign over the angels, You whom the principalities and powers obey, were subject to Mary, and not only to Mary, but also to Joseph because of Mary. For God to obey a creature is humility without a parallel. O Lord, You abase Yourself, and I, shall I exalt myself? O my soul, if you disdain to imitate the example of a man, it will certainly not be unworthy of you to imitate your Creator. If perhaps you cannot follow Him wherever He goes, at least follow Him to the point to which He willed to descend for you” (cf. St. Bernard).

O Jesus, grant that I may follow You in the way of obedience; give me a profound spirit of faith so that I shall always be able to recognize Your voice and will in the command of obedience. “Teach me, O Lord, to abandon myself with confidence to Your words: 'He who hears you, hears Me.’ Teach me to forget my own will; You appreciate this sacrifice very greatly because it makes You Master of the free will which You Yourself have given me. I wish to offer You this gift in its plenitude, with no reservation whatever. Grant that I may be faithful to this resolution and then, in spite of the repugnances and opposition of nature, I shall succeed in conforming myself to what You command; in short, whether it costs me pain or not, I shall succeed in submitting myself. I know indeed, O Lord, that You will not fail to help me, and in subjecting my reason and will for love of You, You will teach me how to become master of them. Once I am master of myself, I shall be able to consecrate myself perfectly to You by offering You a pure will, for You to unite to Your own” (cf. T.J. F, 5).

122. FREE SACRIFICE OF LIBERTY

PRESENCE OF GOD - O Jesus, divine Lamb, immolated voluntarily for the glory of the Father, make me understand the great value of voluntary immolation.


MEDITATION

1. The vow of obedience has been excellently defined as the “free immolation of liberty” (Pius XII, Alloc. Congr. Relig., Dec., 1950). This definition stresses the idea of the freedom of our immolation. It involves no nonchalant passivity, but an intense, noble activity, consisting in the voluntary renunciation of one’s own will by voluntarily submitting oneself to the will of God as expressed in the commands of our superiors. This is very far from the idea of a mechanical, material, or forced obedience, submitted to from necessity—an obedience by which man acts like a machine, or like a servant who submits himself to his master only because he cannot do otherwise. Under these circumstances, there is only the name and the outward appearance of obedience. What is wholly lacking is the inner content: the formal act which consists precisely in the free, and therefore conscious, renunciation of our own wills, in order to adhere to God’s will manifested in the orders of our superiors. Obedience will not be a perfect holocaust unless it contains this double element: free renunciation of self and free adherence to the divine will. This offering will be pleasing and precious in the eyes of God far more than the “oblation of victims” (1 Sm 15,22). If this twofold interior element is lacking, the exterior act of obedience can suffice to keep us from breaking the vow or the promise made, but it loses its profound value and will never succeed in detaching a man from his own will and casting him into God’s will.

When we are satisfied with material, forced obedience, we do not complete the interior act of self-renunciation; though there is the external fulfillment of an order, we are keeping our own will interiorly. Therefore, we cannot say that we have realized the immolation of our liberty, and not even that we have freely embraced the divine will. Such obedience is senseless for a soul that aspires to union with God; it is an attempt to attain the end without making use of the means, to exchange the precious metal of true obedience for a cheap pewter coin. St. Teresa of Jesus tells us that there is “no path which leads more quickly to the highest perfection than that of obedience.... Obedience brings us the sooner to that happy state of union with God” (F, 5). She is evidently speaking only of that obedience which is “the free immolation of liberty,” which has no desire for any other liberty than to do God’s will.

2. A “free immolation” always implies full knowledge and awareness on the part of the one who makes it; it is the same with the act of obedience. If we make a vow or promise of obedience, we must try always to keep alive the sense of responsibility for this contract we have made.

When we pronounced the formula of our profession, we intended to offer our will as a holocaust to God, and to be guided by His representative. Therefore, when given commands—and especially those most unlike our own personal ideas or orders which for one reason or another are more painful to us—we should be vigilant lest it happen that we take back in practice what we have offered by our vow, which would be to commit robbery in our holocaust. Our will has been consecrated, sacrificed on the altar of the Lord, it is no longer ours, hence we have no freedom to take it back. We should, instead, use our liberty to live our offering in its totality day by day, that is, to constantly renew the immolation of our freedom before every disposition of obedience. Blessed obedience, which permits us to actualize our holocaust! “If you give Him your will in any other way,” wrote St. Teresa of Jesus to her daughters, “you are just showing Him a jewel, pretending to give it to Him and begging Him to take it; and then, when He puts out His hand to do so, taking it back and holding on to it tightly” (Way, 32). Unfortunately, this inconsistency is always possible. Although we have sacrificed our will by our vow, it still remains in our hands, and our fidelity to our vow depends on our own will. It is necessary then to have great determination to overcome our repugnance to embrace the will of God as expressed in the commands of our superiors.

“Obedience is the burden of the strong” (Pius XII, Allocution to the Discalced Carmelites, September, 1952), and rightly so, because it requires strength to renounce oneself; but this burden of sacrifice is sweet to the soul enamored of God’s will, for in His love it will always find the strength to renounce itself.


COLLOQUY

O Lord, is there any finer or greater ideal than that of attaining total conformity of my will with Yours, so that it is no longer my own will but Yours that directs, guides, and governs me in all my movements and actions?

Oh! how sublime is this state of perfect conformity to Your divine will! You tell me through St. Teresa: “There is no better way of acquiring this treasure than to dig and toil in order to get it from this mine of obedience. ‘The more we dig, the more we shall find; and the more we submit to men for love of You, and have no other will than that of our superiors, the more completely we shall become masters of our wills and bring them into conformity with Yours. This is true union with You, my God, the union which I desire; I do not covet those delectable kinds of absorption which it is possible to experience and which are given the name of union. They may be union if the result of them is what I have described; but if such suspension leaves behind it little obedience and much self-will, it seems to me that it will be a union with love of self, not with the will of God. May His Majesty grant that I myself may act according to my belief” (T. J. F, 5).

O Lord, You know my will’s dislike of submission, of renouncing itself in subjection to the will of another. There is in me a very strong love of liberty and independence, which inclines me to seek a thousand pretexts and means for avoiding the necessity of submitting. But You also know that there is nothing in the world that I love, seek for and desire as much as Your will. In order to live in Your will, to have the certitude and joy of acting in all things according to Your divine will, I am ready with Your help to make every sacrifice to immolate my liberty fully. O Lord, increase my love for Your holy will, enkindle in me a passion for Your will, and then increase in my soul a love for obedience, that golden channel through which the precious treasure of Your will comes to me.

123. SUPERNATURAL OBEDIENCE

PRESENCE OF GOD - O Jesus, teach me to see only You in my superiors.


MEDITATION

1. An excellent instruction from St. John of the Cross says: “Never look upon your superior, whoever he may be, with less regard than upon God Himself” (P). If we do not have this supernatural spirit which makes us see God in the person of our superior, our obedience cannot be supernatural. It is necessary to be animated by this motive alone: I obey because my superior represents God for me and speaks to me in His Name; my superior is another Christ to me: Hic est Christus meus. This is my Christ.

We should not obey through the motive of human confidence in the person of our superior: because he is intelligent, prudent, capable, because he understands or likes us, and so forth. That is human obedience, the fruit of human prudence—an act good in itself but not supernatural. Neither should we obey because what we are told to do is the most perfect; again this is not the real reason for obedience. We must obey only because God wills whatever our superior commands. The one exception is an order involving sin, which of course God cannot want, or a command not conformable to the Rule or Constitutions which we have embraced. In either case, obedience would be unlawful. Apart from these exceptions no limit should be put to our obedience. We need not hesitate through fear that the superior is asking something less perfect. Even if he commands what is objectively less perfect than its alternative (for instance, to take some rest instead of working), it would nevertheless be the more perfect thing for us. By the simple fact that the superior has expressed an order, it is clearly the fulfillment of that, and not something else, that God wants from us at the moment. It could very well be that in the abstract we see the possibility of performing an action more perfect than what we have been told to do, and that our idea is better than our superior’s. But in reality there is no doubt about it: nothing can be more perfect for us than what God commands by means of our superior.


2. Since the motive of human confidence in our superior is a defective basis for our obedience, we must found it on supernatural confidence, on trust that springs from the recognition of the divine government working through the superiors God has given us. Even if our superiors were less upright or less virtuous, we would have no reason to fear. Faith teaches us that God controls and rules everything and that no human will can escape His divine dominion. Let us suppose that our superior is wrong and orders us to do something—either good in itself or indifferent—from a less upright motive. God always knows how to make use of him for the benefit of our soul; even his imperfect intentions are utilized by God to make us do what He wants of us. This is certain : God directs us by means of our superiors and they are not independent of Him. He uses them as instruments which He employs at His pleasure. Hence we must have recourse to our superior with confidence, since through him we contact God, and we are obeying God when we obey him. Such obedience is entirely supernatural and places us in direct contact with the divine will.

By acting otherwise, St. John of the Cross warns us, “you would do yourself the immense harm of lowering your obedience from the divine plane to the human.... And your obedience will be all the more vain and sterile, the more you feel irritated at the hostile attitude of your superior or more pleased with his easy or pleasant disposition. For I tell you that the devil has ruined the perfection of a great multitude of religious by causing them to consider these characteristics, and their obedience is of very little worth in the eyes of God, because they have considered these things and not paid sole respect to obedience. “If you want your obedience to have full value, fasten your glance only on God, whom you are serving in your superior” (P, 12).


COLLOQUY

O Lord, increase my spirit of faith, so that I will see You in the soul of my superior. May I repeat, spontaneously and sincerely, in his presence, Hic est Christus meus! Only by this way of obedience will a life of continual contact and uninterrupted intimacy with You be possible. If I find You present and living in the Sacrament of the Altar under the veil of the Eucharistic species, always ready to welcome and nourish my soul, I can also, but in a different way, find You hidden in the person of my superior, through whom You speak to me, always ready to disperse my doubts, to manifest Your holy will, and to direct and guide me along the road You have chosen from all eternity for my sanctification.

O Lord, why should I stop at the human appearances of my superiors? Such an attitude will only serve to keep me from finding You in them and recognizing Your will in theirs. Help me, O God, to pass over all the human aspects of obedience and to put myself in contact with You and Your divine will. Just as in the Eucharist I do not halt at the created species of bread and wine, so I ought not in obeying to consider the person of my superior, but only Your will, which reaches me under the appearance of a human order or command. O Jesus, what a great mystery! The Eucharist gives me Your Body, Your Blood, Your divinity—such is the power of the Sacrament which You have instituted. Obedience gives me Your will and makes me communicate with it—such is the power of the authority which You have established.

Once I have understood this profound truth, how can I still dare to argue or hesitate at the commands of my superiors? “ It would be a terrible thing if God were to be telling us plainly to go about His business in some way, and we would not do it but stood looking at Him because that gave us greater pleasure. A fine way it is of advancing in the love of God to tie His hands by thinking that there is only one way in which He can benefit us” (T.J. F, 5). No, Lord, grant that I may never act thus. I shall follow You wherever You lead me by means of holy obedience.

124. BLIND OBEDIENCE

PRESENCE OF GOD - O Jesus, who out of love for me were willing to submit to Your own creatures, teach me to obey blindly.


MEDITATION

1. When we see God in our superior we obey without argument or futile reasoning and with no delay: Christus jubet, sufficit, Christ commands, that is enough. What more do I want, when I know that the orders of my superior are those of God Himself? Even if the thing commanded is hard or painful, my certitude that Our Lord expects it of me will give me the strength to undertake it promptly, without offering the least resistance.

Of course there may be cases where there is good reason to think an order has been imposed without taking into consideration facts which, if overlooked, might be prejudicial to the superior himself; then it is well and sometimes even necessary to bring it to his attention. Neither is there any imperfection in asking for explanations when the order does not seem clear or when it places us in a very embarrassing position; however, this must be done with humility, without insistence and with readiness to submit oneself to the decision
of the superior. We must have the firm determination not to reason or debate about an order, not to inquire into the motives which might have made the superior give a certain command. If we begin to argue about obedience, we put difficulties in the way of obeying; therefore, we must stop all rationalizing, even interiorly, if we wish our obedience to be a pleasing sacrifice to God. It would be worse still to discuss our feelings with others or to criticize the superior’s decisions; acting in such a way, we should create difficulties in obedience for others as well as for ourselves. If we want to offer our entire being to Our Lord, we must completely renounce our own way of thinking, for however good it may be, it will always be infinitely inferior to God’s, and God will accomplish His will in us only when we carry out the orders of our superior.


2. In declaring that our superior manifests the will of God for us, we certainly do not mean that everything he thinks, says, or wishes is thought, said, or wished by God. Certainly not. But we must understand that when the superior—in virtue of his office—gives a legitimate order, the command is a sure manifestation of God’s will. Blind obedience is obedience which goes beyond all personal judgment or opinion and adheres to the superior’s orders, solely because in them is recognized the divine will. This obedience is blind because the intellect is deprived of its own light when it is not permitted to consider its personal judgment, to inquire into the superior’s reasons, or to discuss his orders; it is blind because it is based only on a motive of faith, for by faith we know God’s will is manifested through our superior. Even as faith is an “obscure” knowledge, we can say that the obedience it inspires is “deprived of natural light” and is therefore blind. In other words, blind obedience is not based on reasoning that involves human motives, but it is based on the unique motive of faith which knows that one who hears the superior hears God. “He who hears you, hears Me.”

In a case where the opinion of the subject might be better than the superior’s, blind obedience does not require the denial of one’s own judgment to the point of affirming the contrary—an affirmation which would not be conformable to truth. It simply demands that we give up the right to direct our actions according to our own opinion; we decide that we must obey just the same, because it is certain that God wants what the superior has ordered and not what seems better to us, and perhaps is so objectively.

One who, under the pretext of doing the more perfect thing, departs from the way of obedience, leaves at the same time the sure path of God’s will to enter upon the perilous and treacherous road of his own will. It is certain that a soul consecrated to God can do nothing agreeable to Him outside of holy obedience. “The actions of a religious,” says St. John of the Cross, “are not his own but belong to obedience, and if he withdraw them from obedience, he wilt have to account them as lost” (P, 11).


COLLOQUY

“O Lord, how different are Thy ways from our clumsy imaginings! When once a soul has resolved to love Thee and has resigned itself into Thy hands, Thou wilt have nothing of it save that it shall obey Thee and find out for itself how it may best serve Thee and desire to do so. It has no need to look for paths or to choose them, for its will is Thine. Thou, my Lord, takest upon Thyself the task of guiding it in the way which is the greatest benefit to it. And even though our superior has no mind to our soul’s profit...Thou, my God, hast a mind to our profit, and dost dispose the soul and prepare things for it to do in such a way that, without knowing how, we find ourselves so much more spiritual and so greatly benefited that we are astonished” (T.J. F, 5).

“O my God, from how much disquiet do we free ourselves when we make the vow of obedience! Having nothing for a compass but the will of our superior, we are always sure of following the right path, and need not fear that we will be misled, even when it may appear that our superiors are mistaken. But when we cease to consult the unerring compass, immediately our soul goes astray in barren wastes, where the waters of grace quickly fail. O Jesus, obedience is the compass You have given me to direct me safely to the eternal shore. What a joy it is for me to fix my glance upon You and then to accomplish Your will” (cf. T.C.J. St, 9).

O Lord, I want to apply myself to obedience with unshakable confidence in Your divine Providence which rules, guides and directs everything, making all things work together in an ineffable manner for the good of my soul. I wish to apply myself to obedience without the slightest hesitation, binding myself to You and to Your divine will.

125. DIFFICULTIES IN OBEDIENCE

PRESENCE OF GOD - O Jesus, teach me the secret of humble obedience which submits to every superior and every command.


MEDITATION

1. Although obedience is precious because it places our whole life in God’s will, nevertheless, in practice it has its difficulties and these arise chiefly because the command itself does not come directly from God but through His representatives. Thus it often happens that we fail to see God in our superiors and to recognize His authority in them. For example, when, as often happens in religious life, we have as our superior a former colleague or perhaps even a former pupil, younger and less experienced than we, one whose weaknesses and defects we know only too well, we could easily be tempted to have insufficient respect for his authority and his commands. Then a life of obedience becomes especially difficult: it is hard for us to obey, we do not have recourse to the superior with childlike trust, and what is worse, we justify this attitude to ourselves. Here we are making a great mistake in perspective; we forget that, no matter who the superior is, he is invested with authority which comes from God, authority placed on him solely because he has been called to this office. This authority is unchangeable and has the same force whether the superior is old or young, experienced and virtuous or inexperienced and less virtuous. Basically, if we find ourselves in these difficulties, we must lay the blame on our lack of a supernatural spirit, a spirit of faith, We are judging spiritual matters according to natural standards and from the point of view of human values, which makes it impossible for us to live a life of real obedience, a life entirely based on supernatural values and motives. We must learn how to rise above human views concerning the person of our superior—his good qualities or his faults, his actions in the past, and so forth—to look upon him only as the representative of God and of His divine authority. It is true, we often find it absolutely necessary to use all our strength and efforts to do this if we do not wish to lose the fruit of a life of obedience. It is certain that the more we force ourselves to see in our superiors the authority which comes from God, so much the more perfect and meritorious our obedience will be, and God Himself will guide us by through them.


2. Very often, if not always, a want of supernatural spirit is accompanied by a want of humility. It is painful to self-love to depend upon and submit to others; it is hard to subject our own affairs to the judgment and rule of someone else and to acquiesce to his decisions. It is particularly difficult if the superior seems to be, at least in some respects, our inferior in age, culture, experience, or ability; then the “ego,” its pride hurt, rebels vigorously, hiding its resistance under a thousand excuses. This, too, is a grave error because, although it is true that the superior may be our inferior in some ways, we must not consider this, but only the fact that he is always superior in relation to us—because God has made him so. He is superior because God has placed him over us; he is superior because God has given him the mission to direct us in His place; his personal qualities or defects do not affect the office of superior which God has conferred upon him. Certainly a superior, on his part, should endeavor to acquire, if he does not already possess them, the virtue and capability required by his office. But this is his affair; our duty, as subjects, is to do but one thing : to submit with filial humility, to allow ourselves to be guided and governed. It is strictly a question of humility, because after all, humility means humbling ourselves, putting ourselves in the right place, the place of a subject in relation to a superior, which is always that of humble dependence. Let us reflect on the obedience of Jesus, and in it we shall see the attitude of humility carried to its utmost : although He was God, “He emptied Himself, taking the form of a servant, being made in the likeness of men.... He humbled Himself, becoming obedient unto death, even to the death of the Cross” (Phil 2,7.8). What is our self-abasement, our submission to our superiors and our dependence on them compared to this profound humiliation of Jesus, who although He was God willed to become man, to live as man, subjecting Himself to His own creatures?

Let us be convinced that if our obedience is faulty, it is almost always because we are wanting in humility.


COLLOQUY


“My sweet Savior, can I see You obedient to Your creatures for love of me, and refuse to be obedient out of love for You to those who represent You? Can I see You obedient unto death, the death of the Cross, out of love for me, without lovingly embracing this virtue and the Cross on which You consummated it?

“I will force myself to the utmost of my power to imitate Your example, and for love of You, obey all creatures-—-my superiors, equals, or inferiors—in all things, without argument, murmuring, or delay, but joyfully and lovingly. Therefore, I will not question the reasons why I am old to do this or that; I will not think about the way in which the order is given to me, or the person who gives it. I will consider Your will alone, letting myself be moved like You in any direction, by anyone, in agreeable or disagreeable, suitable or unseemly circumstances. It matters not! Grant me the obedience You desire.

“O Jesus, who willed to make reparation for Adam’s disobedience and mine at the cost of Your life; O Jesus who by Your death acquired for me the grace of knowing how to obey, I wish to live longer only to sacrifice my life by perfect, continual obedience” (St. Francis de Sales).

“O Lord, You desire to infuse obedience into our hearts, but You cannot because we will not recognize that You speak and work through our superiors, and also because we are attached to our own will” (St. Mary Magdalen dei Pazzi).