Of the Excellence of the Virtue of Obedience

OBEDIENCE is better than victims, and to hearken to command than to offer the fat of rams (I Kings xv. 22). The historical occasion is well known in which these words were uttered. It was when King Saul disobeyed the commandment given him by God to destroy Amalek and leave nothing alive, and he kept the better portion of the spoil for sacrifice. The Prophet Samuel said to him on the part of God: Doth God want holocausts and victims, and not rather obedience to the voice of the Lord? Not at all; for obedience is better than sacrifice, and better is it to hear and obey God than to offer him the fat of rams. Resting on this passage, and on many others in Holy Writ where obedience is greatly extolled and the high value that God sets on it, the saints utter many commendations of this virtue. St. Augustine, in various places, treats the question why God gave command to man not to eat of the tree of knowledge of good and evil. His first answer is that it was to show and give men to understand the excellence and value of this virtue of obedience, and the great evil of disobedience. And this was well shown by the event. For the evil and hardship that followed upon sin were not caused by the fruit of the tree. The tree was not evil nor harmful of itself, but good; God had created all things very good, and had no mind to put any evil thing in Paradise. It was disobedience, and the violation of God’s commandment and the obedience due to Him, that made the evil. So St. Augustine says that nothing could better show the great evil of disobedience than the sight of the evil that came upon man by the mere eating, against the commandment of God, of a thing that had no harm in it, and could have done harm to nobody, but for the eating of it being forbidden. Hereby their fault is well shown up who dare to disobey and fail in an observance because it is a slight matter. The sin is not in the thing, but in the disobedience; and that holds even when the thing is slight. St. Augustine gives a second reason for this prohibition. Man being created to serve God, it was fitting that God should impose upon him some precept prohibitive of something, that he might recognize that he had a master, and hold himself for a subject. Unless something were forbidden him and something commanded, he would have had no matter in which to subject himself and recognize that he had a master. The virtue of obedience was meant to be a means for him to recognize God and merit thereby. And he goes on saying many good things in praise of this virtue.

One of the reasons why God became man, he says, was to teach us and commend to us this virtue of obedience, and give us an example thereof. Man had been disobedient unto death; the Son of God came to be obedient even unto death. The gate of heaven had been closed to us, and the grace of God lost, by the disobedience of Adam; it was opened to us by the obedience of Christ. And in the reward and glory of the humanity of Christ, the saint says that there also the Lord wished to show us the virtue and merit of obedience by crowning it with such sublime glory. He made himself obedient unto death, yea, the death of the cross, for which cause God hath exalted him, and given him a name which is above every name, that in the name of Jesus every knee should bow of things in heaven and things on earth and things under the earth (Phil. ii. 8-10).

Many are the excellences and grand things that the saints say of this virtue, but here we will mention only one, which will be sufficient for us; and that is, that it is the most proper and principal virtue of the religious. St. Thomas, who carries things with the rigor of the schools, treats this question, whether the vow of obedience is the chief of the three vows that we make in religion. And he answers, Yes; and gives three very good and profitable reasons for it.

The first is, because by the vow of obedience a man gives and offers to God more than by the other vows. By the vow of poverty a man offers to God his possessions and riches; by the vow of chastity, his own body; but by the vow of obedience he offers his own will and judgment, offering himself entirely to God, which is more than all the rest. And so says St. Jerome: “To leave gold and riches is the part of beginners; many philosophers have done that. But to offer oneself and give oneself over entirely to God is proper to Christians; it is an apostolic work because it is an imitation of the apostles who did the like’—Aurum deponere incipientium est, non perfectorum; fecit hoc Crates Thebanus, fecit Antisthenes: seipsum offerre Deo proprium Christianorum est et apostolorum. And the saint dwells upon the fact that Christ did not say: Verily I say to you that ye who have left all things shall sit on twelve thrones, but ye who have followed me (Mark xix. 28). To follow Christ is the most perfect thing; and in it, as St. Thomas says, is included the counsel of obedience, since he who obeys follows the will and opinion of another.

The second reason is, because the vow of obedience includes and comprises under itself the other vows of religion, while itself is not included or comprised under them. Though the religious binds himself by a particular vow to observe chastity and poverty, yet these virtues also fall under obedience, to which virtue it is proper to guard these and many others. So very true is this that in some ancient orders, as the Carthusians and Benedictines, in their profession they make express mention only of the vow of obedience: “I promise obedience according to the rule.” And under that is understood the vow of chastity and poverty, according to the statutes and custom of the order.

The third reason is, because a thing is better and more perfect, the nearer it approaches and conducts us to its end. Now, obedience is that which unites religious most closely with the end of their order, since it is that which tells and commands them to practise the things which are directed to gain the end thereof. Thus it bids us occupy ourselves with our own spiritual advancement and that of our neighbor, to attend to our meditation and mortification, to engage in hearing confessions, preaching, teaching Christian doctrine, and all other ministries necessary for the helping of souls; and so in other orders.

Hence St. Thomas draws a very important conclusion. It is that the vow of obedience is the most essential thing in religion; it is that which makes a religious and constitutes him in the state of religion. St. Bonaventure agrees with this, and says that all the perfection of a religious consists in entirely giving up his own will and following obedience; and for that reason we make the vows of poverty and chastity, that by relinquishing property and fleshly delights and care of house and family we may be the lighter and the more disengaged to fulfil the vow of obedience, aS being the principal thing. Little will it profit you, he says, to have given up property and wealth if you do not also give up your own will and follow the will of obedience.

Surius relates some notable sayings of St. Fulgentius Bishop, who was abbot of a monastery. This is one of them, dealing with obedience: “Do you know,” he says, “who are true religious? They who have no will of their own, but give themselves up, prompt and indifferent, for anything that the superior shall command them. This it is to be a religious, neither to will nor to will not.’’? He does not say that you will be a religious if you take many disciplines, or wear rough hairshirts, or are strong enough to work hard all day long, or be a great doctor or preacher, but if you be very obedient and have no will of your own. Illos veros monachos esse, qui mortificatis voluntatibus suis parati essent nihil velle, wihil nolle, sed abbatis tantummodo consilia vel praecepta servare.

Thus obedience is the virtue most essential in religion, the virtue that makes one be a religious. It is that which pleases God more than sacrifice and victims; in that is included and contained poverty, chastity, and all other virtues. If you are obedient, you will be poor, chaste, humble, silent, suffering, mortified, and master of all virtues. And this is no exaggeration, but downright truth. For virtues are acquired and gained by practising their acts, and that is the way in which God means to give them to us; now it is just this practice that obedience gives us. All the rules that we have, and all the orders of obedience given us, are an exercise of virtues. Let yourself be carried by obedience, and embrace heartily all the occasions that are offered you. Sometimes they will exercise you in patience, sometimes in humility, sometimes in poverty, sometimes in temperance, sometimes in charity, and in this way you will go growing in all virtues as you grow in obedience. That is what our Father says: “As this virtue shall flourish, so will all other virtues flourish and bear the fruit that I look for in your souls.” It is the common doctrine of the saints to call this virtue the mother and prime source of all virtues. “A very great virtue,” St. Augustine says, ‘and what we may call the prime source and mother of all the rest.” And St. Gregory: “Obedience is the one virtue that inserts and engenders in the soul all other virtues and, after inserting, preserves them.” So they explain that saying of Proverbs: The obedient man shall speak of victories (Prov. xxi. 28) ; that is how St. Gregory and St. Bernard read the text. The obedient man shall gain not one, but many victories. He will gain all virtues who shall be thoroughly obedient. If, then, you wish for a short and compendious lesson how to advance much and attain to perfection in a little time, it is this: Take care to be very obedient. That is a very short road, quite a short cut to that end. So says St. Jerome: “O happy and abundant grace of obedience, wherein is contained the sum of all virtues! By the simple method of obeying in all things that obedience shall command, in a short time one will find himself perfect and full of virtues” —O felix et abundans gratia! In obedientia summa virtutum inclusa est; nam simplici gressu hominem ducit ad Christum.

St. John Climacus says that, coming to a monastery, he saw white-haired old men, of venerable aspect, who were like children, prompt and ready to obey and run about here and there; some of them had been fifty years serving under the standard of obedience. He asked them what comfort and fruit they had found from such great obedience and toil. Some answered that they had thereby attained to the depth of humility, and thereby were delivered from many assaults of the enemy; others, that they had thereby come to lose all sense of injury and insult. Thus obedience is a means of gaining all virtues; and, therefore, those ancient Fathers took it for a good sign of anyone’s being on the road to perfection if they saw him quite subject and obedient to his spiritual father.

St. Dorotheus tells of his disciple Dositheus that, being a youth of noble birth and delicate breeding, he was seized with fear of judgment and the strict account that he had to render to God. God fulfilled in him the petition of the prophet: Pierce my flesh with thy fear; I have been afraid of thy judgments (Psalm cxvili. 120). Smitten and pierced with this fear, he entered religion to be able to render a good account of himself. He was of a weak constitution, and could not follow the community; he could not rise for matins, nor eat the same food as the rest. As he could not do this, he deliberated within himself and resolved to devote himself entirely to obedience, serving with the greatest alacrity and diligence in the guest house and in other offices of humility. Within five years he died of consumption. God revealed to the abbot of the monastery that this youth had attained the reward of Paul and Anthony. The monks complained to God, saying: ‘Where, O Lord, is Thy justice, that Thou wouldst have a man who never fasted, and was reared in luxury, set on a level with us, who bear the full burden of religion—Pondus diei et aestus (Matt. xx. 12)? What are we the better for all the labor we have gone through?” God answered that they did not know the merit and value of obedience, and that thereby this youth had in a short time merited more than others with their great austerities.