OBEDIENT EVEN UNTO DEATH
Not only did Christ die out of obedience, but it is precisely His obedience that gave His sufferings their redemptive vlue. It is the same for us. To obey is to act in the name of another. The child who carries out a paternal command acts in the place of his father. He puts his intelligence and his will at the service of his father, to understand what his father wants of him and to will as his father wills. By obedience, we are the continuation of someone else and of his activity. If that "someone" is superior to us, then obedience brings with it the honor of representing someone great and noble and makes us share in his authority by our submission–since submission purely and simply introduces us into the authority of the superior and gives us a share of it in the measure that we are allowed to use it.
The diplomat shares in the authority of his country by his submission to the letters of credence that the country confides to him. This submission is his way of introducing himself into the power of his country.
So obedience becomes something which enriches us, since it makes the servant a continuation of the one who commands. Without this submission to the one who commands, the servant would not even be a servant, that is to say, the shadow of the one commanding; he would be a mere individual, totally unknown.
It is therefore not such and such a deed, or word, or individual decision that gives grandeur and merit to the actions of a subject, be he soldier, servant, novice, or religious. All grandeur and merit come from the relation between their acts and the authority on which they depend–a relation maintained through the channel of their submission.
To submit under obedience is like submitting to the light of dawn, letting it foster new strength in our soul. Hence the infallible character of obedience. The more submission is total and the subject is penetrated by the will of the Master; the more he becomes the Master Himself without Whom he stays forever his own plain self.
Hence the eminent value of obedience which comes not from the importance of the particular action commanded, but first and foremost from the importance given to complete identification between the will that ordains and the will that carries out. There then remains but one and the same intention at work between the two wills, that is, the intention of the Master.
Therefore, we are able to say with all certainty: No one but God saved the world, acting with complete and utter liberty within the liberty of Christ's humanity which gave complete and utter consent.
On one hand, the knowledge of God, incapable of any error, realizes that the Passion is the sole means of rendering Him glory and of saving mankind. On the other hand, the human knowledge of Christ, incapable of any error, realizes that only He is capable of meriting the Passion, and that the Passion will only merit the redemption by His total consent, given prior to the Passion and renewed at every moment. This consent allows Him to act for and as His Father to the extent that His words and actions, the blows, the spitting, the scourges, the thorns, and the nails, correspond exactly to the idea and the will of God for these, thanks to the perfect consent that Christ brings to them. Hence the unfailing, absolute value of the Passion of Christ, drawn from His obedience.
He offers Himself; He submits.
He allows His soul to fall into the Agony because the Agony translates something of the exigencies of His Father.
He allows His body to fall under the scourges, because the scourges translate something of the exigencies of His Father.
To obey, for Him, is to remain bound to the Father, whom He dearly loves, not simply at all cost, but because it costs greatly. It is on this "because it costs greatly" that He will exercise His consent with an intensity of love all the more absolute because it indeed costs Him intensely.
Yet–and here we enter the heart of the Passion–no one can obey without suffering when he is called on to redeem. Why? Because redeeming means buying back and taking possession of something that no longer belonged to you. To buy something back, you have to pay. To pay means to leave with the merchant, in the form of currency, something of yourself, equivalent to the thing bought.
Since He had to redeem souls, hearts, bodies, He had to pay for them, meaning He had to abandon to evil, then sole proprietor of humanity, the equivalent of the humanities that He was going to buy. And so Jesus abandoned His soul for our souls, His heart for our hearts, His body for our bodies.
Nature paid by suffering for what supernature cost to be bought back.
To obey good is necessarily to disobey evil.
To obey humility is to disobey pride.
To obey truth is to disobey lies–and shake free of them.
The Agony! What generosity and what kindness on the part of our Lord. Our obedience will have the same effects and the same consequences as that of Christ.
The effects?...
As for Christ, it is obedience and obedience alone that gives value to all of our religious life, for the religious life continues the activity of God only by obedience, since obedience alone introduces us into the will of God.
As for Christ, obedience gives us a moral authority which cannot be found anywhere else,since obeying means thinking and speaking in function of our relation to God. And this relation is incomparably noble.
Prayer of the DeterminedTeach me, Lord, to be still, in the great silence O my God...to be still... Teach me, Lord, to be still, in the great silence, Teach me, Lord, to be still, in the great silence, Teach me, Lord, to be still, in a great silence Teach me to be silent before everything that makes us less, Teach me, |
As for Christ, we have to give the fullness of our consent by obedience to the orders of God if we wish our life to have any value at all.
Since the effects are the same, the consequences will also be the same.
We live out our obedience at the expense of nature, which needs to be redeemed. We will have to submit our nature to the light of God. And yet the light of God is so spiritual that it consumes our nature. It consumes a will that is too natural, an intelligence that is too human, a sensibility that is too material.
It should come as no surprise that the partner of obedience is sacrifice. " Obediens usque ad mortem–He was obedient even unto death." Christ offered Himself "clamore valido et lacrimis–with a great cry and tears."
- the cry of surprise of our nature, which never expected obedience would push us to this point,
- the cry of despair of our nature, which never thought love would go so far,
- the cry of revolt of our nature, feeling the constraint of obedience,
- the cry of horror of our nature, as it realizes that to love means to die.
We can understand the tears...
- of the intelligence: distress,
- of the will: anguish,
- of the eyes: fear.
And yet, what blessed anguish. It makes us understand that love is bought with the vital currency of our most unforeseen and least desired immolations, for obedience draws us necessarily onto the path of humiliation.
When we love someone, we no longer have eyes for ourselves but only for the object of our love. We no longer think of ourselves but of the other. We are so filled up with the one we love that there is no room left in us for ourselves. Such is the formula for love. A formula blending the sweetness and the terror of Calvary. Take only the sweetness of love and it is no longer love. Take only its terror, and that is no longer love either. Take both at once, the sweetness of the consent that obeys in spite of the natural terror of immolation, and that is truly to love, since it is to love as Christ loved.
Translated from Les Cahiers de Controverses (No. 2, June 1994, pp. 41-44) exclusively for Angelus Press.
Fr. Bernard-Marie de Chivré, O.P. (say: Sheave-ray') was ordained in 1930. He was an ardent Thomist, student of Scripture, retreat master, and friend of Archbishop Lefebvre. In 1960 he opened a retreat house in Normandy, France, Our Lady of the Granite, which became a meeting place for Catholics. In 1972, he suffered a stroke which rendered him speechless but he recovered to preach again. He died in 1984.
Current Issue
