An Explanation of the Three Reasons That the Apostle St. Paul Gives for Obedience

OBEY your superiors and be subject to them, for they watch with care as having to give an account to God for your souls, that they may do this with joy, and not with sighs, for this is not expedient for you either (Heb. xiii. 17). The Apostle St. Paul here gives us three reasons for obeying our superiors, which, being reasons of the Holy Ghost, spoken by the mouth of the Apostle, cannot fail to be very good and profitable. The first is: Obey your superiors and do all that they bid you, always understanding that there be no sin in the command, as has been explained, and upon this supposition we proceed always in all that we shall say. Be subject to them because they watch as having to give an account to God for your souls. One of the greatest comforts and consolations that we have in religion is this, that we are safe in doing what obedience commands. The superior it is that may be wrong in commanding this or that, but you are certain that you are not wrong in doing what is commanded, for the only account that God will ask of you is if you have done what they commanded you, and with that your account will be sufficiently discharged before God. It is not for you to render account whether the thing commanded was a good thing or whether something else would have been better; that does not belong to you, nor will God lay it to your account, but to the account of the superior. When you act under obedience God takes it off your books, and puts it on the books of the superior. So says St. Jerome: “What a grand liberty and security is that of obedience, under which we can scarcely sin’—O summa libertas, qua obtenta vix possit homo peccare! Obedience, as he says, renders us in some sort impeccable.

Especially for those who like ourselves are occupied in ministering to our neighbor, it is a great comfort to be satisfied that one is doing the will of God. If we were there in the world, however good we might be and however desirous of doing the will of God, we should always be between two fires, not knowing whether we should serve God better by attending to our neighbor or by minding ourselves alone. But here in religion we are free from these difficulties, because it is our institute to occupy ourselves in helping our neighbor, and for that God called us to the Society, and it is He that sets us to that work, so we are certain that we are pleasing His Majesty therein. There outside the walls of religion a man might not dare to hear confessions; or, if he did dare, it might be with fear whether he were pleasing God therein or not, or whether he were in the way of losing his soul thereby or not, but now he rests secure and is certain that he is serving God thereby. You have not set yourself up to be a confessor or to be a preacher or to be a superior, whether you be fitted for the post or not. The superiors who put you in it will render an account to God, for they watch as having to render an account to God for your souls.

St. John Climacus agrees very well with this. Treating of obedience, among other epithets that he applies to it he says that obedience is an excuse before God. If they ask me, “Why did you do that?” I answer, “Lord, because they told me.” That is the answer I will give to God and therewith I shall be quite excused in His sight. It is, he says, a safe voyage, a journey that you may make sleeping. A man on shipboard settles down and sleeps, and yet makes his way; his is no care about the course to be taken. The captain looks to that. So the religious, living under obedience, composes himself to sleep—that is to say, he has no trouble or care about what he is to do, but goes his way to heaven and perfection. Superiors see to that; they are the captains and masters of the ship. It is no small thing, it is a great thing, to traverse the abyss of this world in the arms and on the shoulders of other people. Now this is the blessing which God has given to the religious who lives under obedience, that all his burden is thrown on the shoulders of his superior, and he lives at ease and without care whether this be better or that.

This is one of the things that greatly move virtuous folk to live under obedience and enter religion—to be rid of the endless perplexities and anxieties that they have there in the world, and be sure of serving and pleasing God. For, though the things they choose for their occupation be good, they do not know whether it be given to them to busy themselves with them, since it is not within all men’s compass to do all that is good, especially when it exceeds our strength, as is the work of teaching or having charge of others. So a very grave doctor says that he would rather pick up straws from the ground by obedience than engage in great things of his own will, for in the work done under obedience you are sure and safe of doing the will of God, but in the other not. And not only in ministries and occupations with our neighbors does obedience give us security and deliver us from many doubts and difficulties, but also in private matters that concern our own spiritual advancement. If I were there in the world and desired to serve God, I should be troubled and in doubt whether I eat too little or too much, sleep too much or too little, do too little or too much penance, make too little or too much meditation; but here in religion all these doubts are cleared away, for I eat what they give me, I sleep at the time appointed, I do the penance they assign me. All these things are here so well looked after and weighed by superiors that I am quite safe and sure that, in following the order of obedience, I am doing the will of God.

And not only in spiritual matters, but also in temporal, this is a life very restful and void of care. Like a passenger on board a well-victualed ship, a religious has no need to attend to his own necessities. The superior not only watches over our souls, but over our bodies also. Thus you need not trouble yourselves what you are to eat or what you are to wear, that so you may be more free and disengaged to employ all your energy in loving and serving God—a thing so desirable that Cassian relates of Abbot John how he had first lived thirty years in a monastic community and then thought fit to leave his monastery and choose a hermit’s life, to give himself more to contemplation. And so he did, a thing that they could do in those days. In this eremitical and solitary life he lived twenty years more, with so many heavenly delights and in such high and continual contemplation that he used to forget his body, and his senses no longer did their office, and in the evening he did not remember whether he had eaten that day or not. Yet for all this high degree of contemplation, and though his life in solitude was such a success, he determined to abandon the state of solitude and return once more to the monastery, to live in community under obedience; and so he did. The reason that moved him was that, though in the monastery there was not so much of those ecstatic contemplations as in the desert, yet this, he said, was made up for in the monastery by that holy tranquillity and freedom from care which a religious enjoys in his deliverance from all solicitude and care as to the supply of his wants for tomorrow. And much more is it made up for by what we were saying of one’s being sure of pleasing God in all that one does, and by the fact that for the time being one cannot do anything more pleasing to the Divine Majesty than what one is doing.

God has given to us who are in religion and live under obedience another Moses, such as He gave to the children of Israel, who goes up the mountain and declares to us the will of God. And so we can say what the children of Israel said when they had any doubt or difficulty: Let us go to the seer (I Kings ix. 9). Let us go to consult and ask him who sees. The prophet called him the seer, because he saw and understood from God His will and declared it to the people. Now this is the advantage that we have, that in all our doubts and difficulties we can say, Let us go to the seer; let us go to him whom God has given us for prophet, and put in His place to declare to us His will. Thus we enjoy that blessing or blessedness which the Prophet Baruch spoke of in the name of the people of God. Blessed are we, O Israel, because the things that God requireth and are agreeable to him, he hath made manifest to us (Bar. iv. 4). Happy and blessed are religious who understand and obey their superiors, that they may bear the burden of their office with cheerfulness and joy, and not go groaning under it.

The Apostle has compassion on superiors and pities them, seeing the burden that they bear. So he recommends us to be ready in obedience thereby to render their burden the lighter. Since the superior has labor enough, and bears a heavy burden on his shoulders in having to give an account to God of what he does and of what you do, do not pile more load upon him by making a difficulty of obeying, instead of letting yourself be governed. A great distress it is to a superior to have a subject so unmortified that he cannot do with him what he would like, and dares not order what he judges proper, but has to tread carefully and in fear, wondering whether he will take it well, whether he will answer back and raise difficulties about what he does not like, and how he shall put the thing to him that he may take it well and like the job. To give an order to such people is like commanding and moving a bad leg or arm when you have to do so; what trouble, what pain and annoyance it costs you! Why is that? Because the limb is out of order, and therefore is not easy to command, but very difficult. So great is the pain that you feel in your leg when you try to do anything with it, that you dare not go from here to there even on business of importance, and you rather let the affair lapse than suffer such pain. In the same way with a bad arm; you dare not raise your hand to your mouth to eat. A religious order is all one body, as St. Paul says of the Church (I Cor. xii. 12), and each of us is a member of that body. But if you are an infirm and unmortified member, you will give great trouble to your order and to your superior whenever it comes to making use of you and commanding you. Such is the pain that a superior suffers when he sees a subject do things with difficulty and with a bad grace, that, though the thing needs doing, and affairs and ministries are left on his hands to do, he often dares not issue the order for the great pain he feels in commanding a bad arm or leg.

This is an excellent consideration for those who fancy that it is a pleasant and enjoyable thing to be superior and to have spiritual children to order about. Of Rebecca, Holy Writ tells us that she had much desired to have children, and God gave her them; but when she felt the pains of childbirth, and the two children Jacob and Esau were struggling in her womb which was to come out first, she repented her and said: If the getting of children must be in this manner with so much pain and labor, it were better not to have them (Gen. xxv. 22). So it happens to superiors when they see one man do things with a bad grace; when another answers back, a third complains, and a fourth grumbles. Then the superior feels the throes of his office, and groans under his load, saying: “Oh, happy the man that is left alone in his corner, and has to take account of nothing but of doing what he is told! Is it this to have children? Is it this to be superior and have subjects? If the business of having subjects is to go on in this fashion, much better have none.”

No one knows the greatness of this pain but he who has had experience of it. They say commonly that to be a good superior, and know how to command, it is necessary to have been first a good subject, and have learned by experience what it is to obey, so that it may be said of him with truth what St. Paul says of Christ: We have not a prelate who doth not know how to compassionate our labors and weaknesses, but one who hath gone through them himself and had experience of them (Heb. iv. 15). This is certainly a very reasonable saying; but I say another thing, for which I believe all will judge that I have reason enough. It is that, as to be a good superior and know well how to command, it is a great help to have been a subject and have learned by experience what obedience is like, so also to be a good subject and a good son of obedience, it is a great help to have held the office of superior and to have had to issue commands; for thus one will have learned by experience the great difficulty and pain there is in commanding when subjects do not behave nor obey well, and thus he will have no mind to give such pain to his superior. And for this it is not necessary to have been a high superior; it is enough to have had the charge of commanding some companion or assistant. How many times have you omitted giving him an order because you did not dare, and how many times have you felt giving the order more than you would have felt doing the thing all by yourself? Then anyone may see the pain that the superior feels and the affliction which he suffers when the subject makes a difficulty of obeying orders. These people make their superior go groaning and ready to burst with grief over the burden of his office, and wishing it were possible to do everything by himself rather than command others.

And this is not the greatest affliction of the superior. What he feels most is the evil condition of his subject. For after all the superior is a father, and he cannot help being hurt at the weakness shown by his children, seeing their imperfection and the little virtue they have; and that, whereas they ought with the greatest readiness to undertake such duties as are lowly and humble and more repugnant to sense, for these there are offered all manner of replies and excuses, and for these there are brought up at once a thousand objections. Thomas 4 Kempis says that a tepid and half-hearted religious gets ill and indisposed at once for anything he does not like; he never lacks a pretext for not doing what he has no mind to do. We cannot do what we don’t want to do; and what we do want we can do at once, though it be the hardest thing to do. St. Chrysostom says: “Great is the force of our own will; it makes us do what we want to do, and unable to do what we do not want.” This, then, is the great grief of the superior; this is what cuts him to the heart, the spiritual infirmity of his subject, his imperfection and want of mortification.

Obey, then, your superiors and be subject to them, and do not give them this pain; do not set them groaning and choking with grief under their burden, for this is not expedient for you. This may stand for the third reason. See that this is not a thing suited to you either, since you also will go groaning and choking with grief under the burden, and you will lead a very cheerless life, as they find out by experience who go on in that way. See how they will leave you alone for a sick member, and will leave things undone; and that certainly will not be to your credit. See how they will condescend to your imperfection and let you do as you like; and so you will be doing your own will in things and not God’s will, which is a thing that we ought greatly to dread, as we have said above.