Of the Obedience Necessary in Spiritual Things

fe is not only in things that seem to fall in well with flesh and blood that we must subject and surrender our judgment and reason; the same is equally necessary in things contrary to flesh and blood, and in themselves quite spiritual and holy. Let no one imagine that in these matters he is licensed to depart from the will and judgment of the superior. Rather it is just here that obedience of the judgment is more necessary, since from the exalted nature of the spiritual world the danger of a fall will be greater if we have no guide. So true is this that Cassian goes so far as to say that by no other vice does the devil drag away a monk and cast him headlong to perdition so readily as when he persuades him to despise the counsels of his elders, and trust to his own judgment, decision, and knowledge. Cassian, and St. John Climacus also, quotes many instances of monks, men of high spirituality and much given to prayer, and of a ripe old age, who, by trusting their own judgment and letting themselves be guided by that, came to be grievously deceived by the devil. The devil led one to the point of wanting to sacrifice his son, who was along with him in the monastery, under the idea that he should thereby be another Abraham. And he would have carried it into effect, too, had not the lad, seeing him sharpening his knife and preparing the cords to bind him, suspected what was in the wind and taken to his heels. Another he came to induce to throw himself down a precipice, persuading him that he would be a martyr and go straight to heaven.

Of the monk Heron, Cassian relates that he was so recollected and abstemious that even on the solemn day of Easter, when the other monks used to meet in the church, and afterwards take recreation together and have something extra to eat, he would not go out of his cell, nor break his abstinence so much as by the addition of a few herbs, but kept to his ordinary diet of bread and water, and that in very restricted measure. Hereby there was engendered in him a pride and assurance in his own judgment so great that the devil succeeded in persuading him that so holy a man as he could not incur any danger in this life, and might with perfect safety throw himself into a well, and be no worse for it, since the angels would receive him in their arms so that he should take no harm. Accordingly one night he did throw himself into a very deep well by way of proving his great virtue and merits; the result was that he hurt himself badly, and died of it two days after. On hearing the noise, the monks rushed to the spot and with great labor drew him out half-dead; and when he saw with his own eyes the hurt that he had received, and all the monks were trying to persuade him to repent, still no means could be found to get him to believe that he had been under an illusion, and so he made a miserable end. Hence we may learn the great danger there is in a man’s trusting his own judgment and not yielding and subjecting it to the proper authority, whatever be his age in religion and proficiency in spirituality. Hence a saint went so far as to say, and very rightly, too, that he who trusts himself has no need of a devil to tempt him, seeing that he is his own devil. St. Chrysostom says that he who relies on his own judgment, however spiritual he may be, is in greater danger of going wrong than a mere beginner who lets himself be guided and governed by another; and likens the former to a great pilot, who, in reliance on his own skill, goes out onto the high seas in a boat without oars or sails; while the latter, being no seaman, trusts himself to an experienced mariner to make his passage in a well-appointed ship.

Let no one, then, be under the illusion that in spiritual things, as in fasts, prayers, penances, and mortifications, he may depart from obedience and guide himself by his own judgment. Cassian observes very well that it is one and the same kind of disobedience to break the superior’s command in view of getting more work done as it would be to do the same to get more rest. And St. Basil says: “Go always on this principle, never to do a thing against the sentiment and will of your superior, since you are not your own, but belong to your order, and to act otherwise would be a theft and even a sacrilege, since it is taking away a thing that is already dedicated and offered to God.” And he gives a good reason: “If the thing that you are doing is good and proper for you to do, why do you try to do it on the sly and without leave?’—Hoc apud te constanter teneto, ut nihil omnino quidquam praeter tilius sententiam facias; quidquid enim eo insciente facis, id furtum et sacrilegium est, tibique exitium non autem utilitatem ullam apportat, esto tu id bonum iudices. Nam si bonum est, quia ita clam fit et non in aperto? Your superior is as desirous of your good and your improvement as you are; tell him the thing, and he will give you leave for it; if you do not do it in that way, not only will it profit you nothing, but you will be the worse for doing it. Let not that saying of Isaias apply to you: Offer me no more sacrifice to no purpose (i. 13). Why should you be anxious to labor in vain?

St. Gregory and St. Bernard say very well: A bad thing ought never to be ordered, and in a thing that is sinful it is clear that the subject ought not to obey; but when it comes to omitting a thing that is good because the superior forbids it, that ought to be done. The tree of Paradise that God forbade to our first parents was not bad, but good; but God forbade it them to increase their merit by that obedience, and show the subjection and acknowledgment that they owed to their Creator and Lord. So He commanded them not to eat of a thing that they might lawfully and holily have eaten if He had not forbidden it. So also our superiors at times forbid things which of themselves are good, because there and then they are not suitable to the subject, or to try his virtue and obedience. St. Basil adds here a thing specially worthy of remark; he says that true and perfect obedience in a subject is not so much seen in his leaving undone what is evil as in his leaving undone what in itself is good and holy, when ordered to leave it undone. And the reason thereof is that evil, though not forbidden, ought to be left undone because it is evil; but what is of itself good and holy is only left undone because of the command to let it alone; so the virtue of obedience shines out more conspicuously here, because but for that motive there would be no apparent reason for leaving the thing. Contrariwise again, when a man refuses to yield and submit in spiritual things, things of themselves good and holy, he shows more self-will and hardness of judgment; because in other things there is a certain pleasure and prompting of sensuality, making one fail in silence, modesty, temperance, and in other like things commanded; but in these things, that are contrary to our flesh and sensuality, there is no other pleasure than that of doing one’s own will and following one’s own judgment: it is all mere disobedience and hard-headedness. And so it comes to be that, just where a man thinks to please God more and do a work of supererogation and perfection, in that very work he rather shows his imperfection and makes himself more displeasing to God and superiors. God keep you from taking after the hard-mouthed horse, that neither feels nor obeys the bit, but goes where he likes, and when you least think it will throw you into a tight corner or over a precipice. A good horse should be soft-mouthed, taking the bit well and letting itself be carried along and governed; so the religious should be soft and yielding in his judgment, taking kindly to the bridle of obedience and letting himself be governed and carried readily in one direction and another.

In the Ecclesiastical History we have the story of that great servant of God, Simon Stylites, which means “Seated on a Pillar.” He kept his position and was there doing penance on a pillar forty cubits [sixty feet] high, in winter suffering the severest cold, and the most intense heat in summer. So great was the penance and abstinence that he did there that some came to doubt whether he were a man at all; for it seemed a thing beyond all human endurance to be able to do and suffer the things that he did and suffered, especially when they saw that every year he fasted all Lent without eating or drinking anything all that time. Now, some holy Fathers of the Desert, seeing this strange and extraordinary way of life, assembled and held a meeting on the case, to see what was to be done; and the resolution they came to was to send him a message in this form: “What new and quite unprecedented manner of living is this? What means it that you have left the beaten track, trodden by the saints, and taken a road strange and new, that no one has gone before? The Fathers have assembled in congregation, and bid you come down from there at once, and follow the common way, trodden of old, which other monks follow, and give over those novelties.” The messenger was instructed that, if on hearing this message he obeyed, and with promptitude and alacrity at once set about coming down from his pillar, they gave him leave to stay there and persevere in that manner of life, as new as it was rigorous, since his obedience was sufficient witness to that way’s being of God; but if he resisted and would not come down and obey, the instructions were to force him to come down and leave the place at once. The messenger went with this message to the saint, and scarcely had he heard the mandate published that was brought him from the Fathers, when he put a foot forward to come down and obey. Then the messenger gave him the second part of the message that he brought, and said to him: “Be of good heart, my father, and persevere with every blessing upon you in that manner of life that you have taken up, since it is of God, and such is the opinion of those Fathers.” A thing to be well noted here is, on the one hand, the saint’s great obedience and submission of judgment in a thing so good, that he took to be of God; and on the other, how great account all those Fathers made of that obedience and submission, since they took it for a sufficient sign for judging that the Spirit of God was there; whereas his refusal to submit and subject himself at once to obedience they would have reckoned enough to hold him for no good man.

This is an excellent sign, and one commonly accepted as such by confessors and masters of spirit in many things, to know whether suggestions come from the good Spirit or not. This penitent has a great devotion to frequent Communion, and the confessor [prior to A.D. 1905] bids him not to communicate so often. This other desires to do great penance, many fasts, disciplines, and haircloths; another would fain sleep on the ground; another would curtail his sleep, and so forth. A very good thing, certainly, and very praiseworthy, is the desire of much penance and mortification; and of the two extremes that which is to be less suspected is an inclination to go rather against oneself than in favor of oneself, since the natural desire of self-love is ever to be feared and held in suspicion. But the best course in all these things, and one beyond all suspicion, is to give an account to the superior or the confessor of all that you do and all that you desire to do, and take the line that he marks out, since that will be the more pleasing to God and the more meritorious way.

And let this theological teaching be observed, for it is quite good and quite certain that, if a man has a working desire of doing certain penances or mortifications, and on giving an account of it to the superior the latter orders him to leave such things off, and he obeys in the matter, not only does he not lose the merit and gain of such works, but rather increases and doubles it; since on the one hand he gains the value and merit of those works and penances, for the working will that he had of doing them; and on the other hand he gains the value and merit of obedience by leaving them off for obedience. And sometimes this merit will be greater than the former for the greater abnegation and resignation of his will and judgment, in leaving what he so much desired, to obey and do the will of God as declared by his superior. This theological teaching was taught from heaven to the blessed St. Bridget. This saint had a strong inclination to severe penances; but the spiritual father who had the guidance of her took off at one time part of them in consideration for her health. She, though she obeyed, found it difficult, and was afraid of losing in her soul some degree of virtue. The most holy Virgin appeared to her and said to her: “Look here, daughter; if two men desire to keep a fasting day for devotion, and the one, who is his own master, actually does fast and receives his pay for fasting, while the other, being under obedience, does not fast because the superior tells him not, the latter gets double pay, one installment for his earnest and sincere desire to fast, and the other for renouncing his own will and obeying.”

Even there in their heathendom, the heathen philosophers recognized and greatly esteemed this manner of obedience. Plutarch tells of Agesilaus, a most famous captain of the Lacedemonians, that, when he was deeply engaged in wars against the enemies of his country, and things were going very prosperously with him, and he was gaining great victories and winning great fights, there came to him one day a dispatch from the home government, bidding him retreat. And though he was in the midst of his glories, and had quite the upper hand of the enemy, he gave up at once and retreated. Plutarch says that he gained more honor and reputation by this act than by anything he had done in all the rest of his life. But let us leave foreign examples, since we have our own. Who will not be astonished at that great Obedience of Father Francis Xavier, whom our blessed Father Ignatius had so much reason to think highly of. He had in hand the conquest and conversion of a new world, when our Father summoned him to Rome, doing it with one single letter of the alphabet which he put at the end of his dispatch, added to his signature; it was J, which in Spanish stands for Jd (Go). He was quite satisfied that he would quit that great enterprise and take the road to Rome from what was almost the extremity of the East. And doubtless he would have done so, but for the event that before the letter reached him he was already gone to enjoy the fruits of his labors in heaven.