Of the Third Degree of Obedience

| bree third degree of obedience consists in conforming our understanding and judgment to the judgment and understanding of the superior, having not only one will with him, but also one opinion with his opinion, judging that what he orders is well ordered, subjecting our judgment to his, and taking his for the rule of ours. To understand the necessity of this degree of obedience, that were enough which we said at the outset, that without it obedience will never be perfect nor entire. The saints say that obedience is a most perfect holocaust, in which the whole man, without any division of himself or any reservation of anything for himself, offers himself to his Creator and Lord in the fire of charity by the hands of his ministers. That was the difference in the Old Law between a holocaust and other sacrifices, that in other sacrifices part was burned in honor of God and part was kept back for the support of the priests and ministers of the Temple; but the holocaust was wholly consumed in the fire—nothing of it was reserved or kept back. If, then, you do not obey with the understanding, there will be then no holocaust, no entire and perfect obedience, since you fail to offer the chiefest and noblest part of your being, your understanding and judgment. So our Father used to say that those who obeyed with the will only, and not with the judgment, had only one foot in religion.

The blessed St. Bernard explains what and how this obedience of the understanding should be, by following up the history of the conversion of St. Paul and applying it hereto. When St. Paul, bewildered at the light from heaven, was converted and said: Lord, what wilt Thou have me to do? the Lord answered: Go into the city, and there they will tell thee what thou art to do (Acts ix. 7). On this plan and to this purpose it was that you entered religion. It was not without a high and divine purpose that God put fear and alarm about your salvation into you, and gave you a great desire to serve His Majesty, and to that end inspired you to enter this city, this school of virtue. Here they will tell you what you are to do, and what God requires of you. Going on with the story, we are told how, when St. Paul came into the city, though his eyes were open, he saw nothing, but was carried and led by others. That is the pattern and model of the obedience which a religious should observe. The perfection of it consists in this, that, though your eyes are open, you do not see or judge of anything, but let yourself be carried and guided by your superiors, putting yourself entirely in their hands. Take care not to open your eyes to your cost, as Adam opened his.

Holy Writ says of our first parents that, after they had sinned, their eyes were opened and they knew that they were naked and were greatly ashamed of themselves (Gen. iii. 7). But how? Before their sin were they not naked as well, and had their eyes open? Clearly so, for God did not create them blind; but they did not come to see that they were naked, and did not dwell on the fact, because they were then living in the holy simplicity and purity of original justice, as it were, angels on earth. Now, this holy simplicity and perfection, which they lost by their disobedience, we ought to try and copy by our obedience in this paradise of religion. We should not have our eyes open to see other people’s faults; and though another openly displays his fault and nakedness, we should not cast our eyes on it, nor dwell on it, and much more So in things that touch upon obedience. St. John Climacus, speaking of the care and diligence to be observed in this particular, says that, if thoughts and judgments contrary to obedience come into our mind, we should behave as when there come thoughts of blasphemy against God and against the faith, or foul and impure thoughts; we should give them no place nor entry in any way, but rather take from thence an occasion of greater shame and self-abasement.

In a letter of St. Jerome to a monk, instructing him how to behave in religion, one of the things that he strongly enjoins is this: “See that you never come to pass judgment on the commands and ordinances of superiors, asking why they have ordered this or that and whether it would not have been better to have put the thing in some other way than this, for that is no concern of the subject, but of the superior.” St. Basil, exhorting to the same, says: “Even there in the world, when anyone wants to learn a mechanical art in order to gain a livelihood, we see that he apprentices himself to a master, watches steadily his hands, and obeys him in all that he tells him, without contradiction or passing judgment on anything or asking the reason of the order; and in that way he comes out a skilled artisan.” We read of Pythagoras that, when he had said a thing, he bade his disciples ask no further questions, but keep to it inviolably, so that on being told, “He said it,” there was an end of the matter. How much more is it to be expected that we should do so, dealing with one who is greater than Pythagoras, inasmuch as he stands in place of Christ our Lord; and when we see a thing to be commanded by obedience, no more should be needed to make us at once submit our judgment and believe that to be the proper thing to do. Eusebius of Caesarea relates that the Lacedemonians had a law that none of the young men who were new to government functions should dare to dispute whether the laws were good or bad, nor look for flaws in them, but they were to surrender their judgments, and regard the laws as coming from God. The fact that their elders and predecessors had given them was to be argument enough for them to convince them that they were quite just. And if there were any difficulty arising from change of circumstances and times, suggesting a change in the laws, it was arranged that this change should not be proposed in presence of the young men, but it was to be referred to the elders in office for them to see what was fit, and no occasion be given to the young to lose their respect and veneration for the laws, which they reckoned would be a great misfortune for the commonwealth. Now, if those Gentile philosophers wished, and thought it so necessary, that such respect should be paid to the laws given by their ancestors, much more reason must there be for us Christians and religious to pay this reverence and respect to the ordinances and commands of our spiritual prelates, founded as they are not only on natural reason, as were the ordinances of those philosophers, but on the light of faith and the grace of the Gospel.

Our Father, in his marvelous “Letter on Obedience,” shows very well that, away from this obedience of the judgment, it is impossible for the obedience of will and execution to be what it should be, and sets down many losses and inconveniences that follow from the want of this obedience; to which letter I refer the reader as the textbook of all that can be said on this matter.