St. Alphonsus Liguori teaches that true perfection lies in conforming our will to God’s, and the surest way to do this is through obedience to lawful superiors. Obedience, he says, is more pleasing to God than sacrifice, for in it we surrender not just our possessions but our very will. In giving our will, we give Him all we have.
Obedience
Perfection consists in the conformity of our will to the Will of God. Now what is the surest means of knowing God’s Will, and of regulating our lives according to it? It is obedience towards our lawful superiors. “Never is the Will of God more perfectly fulfilled,” says St. Vincent de Paul, “than when we obey our superiors.”
The greatest sacrifice that a soul can make to God consists in obedience to lawfully constituted superiors; for as, in the opinion of St. Thomas, “nothing is dearer to us than the liberty of our will,” we can offer to God no more acceptable gift than this very liberty. “Obedience is better than sacrifices,” says the Holy Ghost (1 Kings 15:22); that is to say, God prefers obedience to all other sacrifices. He who gives his property to God, by distributing it among the poor; his honor, by patiently bearing contempt; his body, by fasts and penitential works, gives Him a part of himself. But he who offers God his will, by subjecting it to obedience, gives Him all he has, and can truly say: “My Lord, after I have given Thee my will, I have nothing more to give.” As St. Gregory says: “By the other virtues we give to God what belongs to us; by obedience we give Him ourselves.” The same Saint teaches that all the other virtues follow in the train of obedience and by its influence are preserved in the soul.
A Great Reward
According to the Venerable Sertorius Caputo, the reward of obedience is similar to that of martyrdom. In martyrdom we offer to God the head of our body; by obedience we offer Him our will, which is the head of the soul. Therefore the Wise Man assures us that “an obedient man shall speak of victory.” (Prov. 21:28). It is easy, says St. Gregory, for those who obey, to overcome all the attacks of Hell; for, since by obedience they subject their will to men, they rise superior to the demons who fell on account of their disobedience. Cassian adds that if we mortify our self-will, we can easily root out all vices, because the latter spring from the former.
St. Augustine says that while Adam through disobedience brought destruction upon himself and all his posterity, the Son of God became man to redeem us and to teach us true wisdom by His life of obedience. For this reason He began as a child to practice obedience when He was subject to Mary and Joseph: “He was subject to them,” says St. Luke (2:51). What our Saviour began as a child He continued His whole life, so that St. Paul could say: “He was obedient unto death, even to the death of the cross.” (Phil. 2:8). The Mother of God revealed to one of her servants that Our Lord when dying for us entertained a very special love for obedient souls. To increase our merit, Our Lord desires us to be guided by faith. Therefore, instead of speaking to us Himself, He makes His Will known to us by means of our superiors.
When Jesus appeared to St. Paul and converted him on the road to Damascus, the future Apostle said: “Lord, what wilt Thou have me to do?” The Lord could easily have instructed him then and there, but He did not; He merely said: “Arise and go into the city, and there it shall be told thee what thou must do.” (Acts 9:7). Accordingly, St. Giles maintains that we gain more merit by obeying man for the love of God than by obeying God Himself. When we obey lawful superiors we are more sure of doing the Will of God than if Jesus Christ Himself would appear and speak to us. Such an apparition might afford us no certainty that it really was our Saviour who appeared and spoke; the evil spirit can appear as an angel of light in order to deceive us. But when we receive a command from our superiors, we are certain that in obeying them we are obeying Jesus Christ Himself. “He that heareth you, heareth me.” (Luke 10:16).
A Source of Merit
It is a delusion, therefore, to imagine that we can do anything better than that which is prescribed by obedience. To leave the occupation we are in duty bound to perform, in order to be united with God in meditation or spiritual reading is rather, according to St. Francis de Sales, to leave God in order to follow more closely the dictates of our self-love. From a soul that is resolved to serve God, says St. Teresa, God desires but one thing, and that one thing is obedience. “What we do from obedience,” says Rodriguez, “is of more value than any other work we can perform.”
It is more meritorious to pick up a straw from the ground, out of obedience, than from self-will to make a long meditation or scourge ourselves to blood. St. Mary Magdalen de Pazzi preferred an exercise prescribed by obedience even to prayer. “When I am acting out of obedience,” she said, “I am certain that I am doing the Will of God, but at other times this is not the case.” All the masters of the spiritual life are unanimous in asserting that it is better to omit a pious exercise from obedience than to perform it against obedience. The Blessed Virgin revealed to St. Bridget that he who from obedience omits an act of mortification gains a double merit: that of the mortification he would like to perform, and that of obedience for the sake of which he omits it. St. Teresa was therefore right in saying that obedience is the shortest way to perfection. Christian soul, if you desire to walk securely, be guided in all your actions by obedience. Merchants and business men have their property insured in order not to suffer loss from its destruction. In order to render safe your eternal reward, make sure to get the security of obedience for all your actions.
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This article is taken from a chapter in The School of Christian Perfections by Saint Alphonsus Liguori which is available from TAN Books.
