That God Takes as Spoken against Himself Any Disparaging and Complaining Words Spoken against the Superior

S, when we obey the superior, we obey and honor God, Whom he represents and in Whose place he stands, so also any disrespect to the superior is disrespect to God. The same reason holds for the one and the other. And Christ our Redeemer spoke in like manner of both. He that heareth you, heareth me; and he that despiseth you, despiseth me (Luke x. 16). And St. Paul, writing to the Romans, gives this reason: Since there is no power but of God, he who resisteth the power and ordinance of superiors resisteth God (Rom. xiii. 1-2). Holy Scripture is full of this. When the children of Israel murmured against Moses and Aaron, who were those whom God had given them for superiors, because they found themselves in the desert with nothing to eat, and repented of having gone out of Egypt, the text says: Moses and Aaron said to the people: The Lord hath heard your murmuring against Him; as for us, who are we? Not against us have ye murmured, but against God (Exod. xvi. 6-7). And when the children of Israel rejected Samuel, and asked to have given them a king, as the other nations had, God said to Samuel: They have not rejected thee, but me (I Kings viii. 7). In this way they explain also that text of Isaias: Think it ye a light matter to be troublesome and burdensome to men, whom God hath sent you to rule and govern you? Understand, then, that it is not a little thing, but a serious thing, for ye are troublesome even to my God (Isaias vii. 13); since the offense is done to God, and He takes it as done to Him. How much God abhors these murmurings against superiors, and how He takes the injury for His own, is seen in the great and extraordinary chastisements wherewith He has punished it. Of Core, Dathan, and Abiron Holy Scripture relates that He punished them with a fearful punishment for murmuring against Moses and Aaron, and saying that they were arrogant in their government. The earth opened and swallowed them down alive to hell, with their women, houses, and families; and fire came down from heaven and burned two hundred and fifty others (Num. xvi. 33, 35). St. Thomas (2a—2e, q. 93, art. 2) here calls attention to the fact that God chastised more rigorously and signally those who murmured against their superiors than those who outraged immediately God Himself by their idolatry in adoring the golden calf. These last He was satisfied with putting to the sword, but for the former He brought down fire from heaven, and set the earth ablaze, and swallowed them down alive to hell; to give us to understand, says St. Thomas, how greatly God resents any insult and injury done to those whom He puts in His place.

Hence, by the way, we may understand the reason why in Holy Writ the sin of disobedience is compared to the sin of idolatry. As the sin of divination by diabolic art, so it is to contradict obedience; and as the sin of idolatry to refuse to submit (I Kings xv. 23); so said the Prophet Samuel to Saul when rebuking him for his disobedience. St. Gregory and St. Bernard give the reason of this comparison: for, as the sin of idolatry and holding consultation with the devil is a renunciation of the worship and reverence due to God, so also the sin of disobedience and disrespect to superiors deprives God of the reverence and honor due to Him, since they stand in the place of God. Furthermore, as the idolater, abandoning the true God, adores and honors an idol of wood, so the disobedient man, ceasing to follow the true rule, which is God, follows the false rule, which is his own judgment and human reasonings.

But to come back to our point, on one occasion God very nearly destroyed all the children of Israel in the wilderness for murmuring against Moses and Aaron, sending them serpents to bite them (Num. xxi. 5). St. Paul quotes this instance, writing to the Corinthians: Nor murmur ye, as some of them murmured, and perished by the destroyer (1 Cor. x. 10). Mary, the sister of Moses, was also punished by God for the same offense with a grievous leprosy, and with that He would have her banished from camp for seven days, notwithstanding all the prayers of Moses for one so dear to him. And he who could hold back the anger of God not to vent itself at one blow upon that idolatrous people, did not succeed in getting his sister pardoned without due satisfaction (Num. xii. 10-15).

From this precedent St. Basil adopted the punishment which he prescribed for any religious who was guilty of murmuring or detraction. He would have the offender separated from the community, not only his person, but also his things. His work was not to be mixed with that of the others; but, as they do with the plague-stricken, his person, his clothes, and all that he had touched or handled was cast out, not to infect the rest; thus he was to be separated from the community like an excommunicate. He was to be left alone; none was to go near him in prayer, at meals, at the hour of repose or work, that so he might be ashamed of himself and amend.

Pope Nicholas I, writing to the Emperor Michael to rebuke him for insolence as having spoken disrespectfully of bishops, cites to this purpose the story of David. When Saul was pursuing him and close in upon him, David found the king one day alone in a cave, where he might have slain him with impunity. But he would not lay hands on him, taking it for a treasonable deed to lay hands on the Lord’s anointed, however wicked he was and such an enemy of his. But he ventured to cut off a piece of the hem of his garment; and afterwards, says Holy Writ, David’s conscience smote him for having done even that (I Kings xxiv. 6-8). So, says the pope, a good subject ought to act. recognizing in his superior Christ our Lord, not daring to slash the robe of his superior with the knife of his tongue; and if for once from negligence or weakness, or under the influence of passion, he comes to break out and mention some small fault, he ought at once to be conscience-stricken as David was, for having touched the hem of the superior’s garment, however small and minute the fault. And he adds this saying, commonly applied to prelates: “The doings of superiors, though they sometimes seem worthy of reprehension, are not to be slashed with the knife of the tongue, because they hold the place of God”—Facta superiorum oris gladio ferienda non sunt, quamvis reprehendenda videantur. Therefore the Lord Himself says: Thou shalt not murmur against the Gods—Diis non detrahes (Exod. xxii. 28). He calls them Gods, and wishes them to be reverenced as such.

To what has been said it may be added that not only is injury done to God and to the superior, but also much harm is done to the subject, speaking to whom the murmuring is brought out; for it discredits the superior in his eyes, and diminishes the good opinion and esteem that he had of him, and makes him conceive some sort of aversion and disaffection for him. Hereby the authority and force of obedience is greatly impaired, and it may cause the other not to profit by what the superior says or does to him, and that bars the way to his spiritual progress, which should be through the superior. In all these ways it behooves us to be very much on our guard against hindering so much good. The Apostle says accordingly: Take care that no root of bitterness spring up as an obstacle, and thereby many may be contaminated (Rom. xii. 15). We should pay great attention to this, even though it be in slight and trivial things; for it would be no slight or trivial thing to deprive the superior of the love, esteem, credit, and confidence which a subject had in him. That is the usual con-’ sequence of such murmurings and babblings; that is what we should look to in them, and not to the question of the thing mentioned being in itself grave or light.