Chapter 5 Obedience
To you have I lifted up my eyes, you who dwell in the heavens; my eyes. . . like the eyes of a servant on the hand of her mistress, so our eyes are on the Lord our God (Ps 122:1-X)
Obey out of love
Everything in the Rule begins from a desire to conform to the will of God because the will of God is our highest aspiration. The superior, who is wiser than you, stands in for God in your life. Who is your superior? Put yourself under obedience to someone wiser. Together, you will seek the truth, and the practices that reveal that truth to you. Just like an athlete, you may find some of these practices uncomfortable, but you do them knowing it is for your good and for your ambition to be close to God.
St. Maximilian Kohl expresses this well. In the Office of Readings for August 14, the church quotes his letter: It is obedience and obedience alone that shows us God’s will with certainty.
God himself is the one infinite, wise, holy, and merciful Lord, our Creator and our Father, the beginning and the end, wisdom, power, and love – God is all these. Anything that is apart from God has value only in so far as it is brought back to him, the Founder of all things, the Redeemer of mankind, the final end of all creation. Thus he himself makes his holy will known to us through his vice-gerents on Earth and draws us to himself, and through us – for so he has willed – draws other souls too, and unites them to himself with an ever more perfect love.
See then, brother, the tremendous honour of the position that God in his kindness has placed us in. Through obedience we transcend our own limitations and align ourselves with God’s will, which, with infinite wisdom and prudence, guides us to do what is best. Moreover, as we become filled with the divine will, which no created thing can resist, so we become stronger than all others. (Emphasis in bold added)
Obey out of love. Consult your motivations, and purify them in this direction.
Credit: Mike Jumapao