The
Cycle of Daily Readings from the Rule of St. Benedict starts with the call to
obedience.
LI S T E N carefully, my child, to your master's precepts, and incline the ear of your heart (Prov. 4:20). Receive willingly and carry out effectively your
loving father's advice, that by the labor of obedience you may return to Him from whom you had departed by the sloth of
disobedience. To you, therefore, my words are now addressed,
whoever you may be, who are renouncing your own will and are taking up
the strong, bright armor of obedience to do battle under the
Lord Christ, the true King,[i]
Obedience is often difficult for contemporary
Americans who beat the loud drum of independent thinking and action. The first job of military boot camp is to
boot that out of us. Why? In warfare, if you don’t learn obedience you
and your friends might very well die.
Bear in mind, that the testimony of the saints is that we are involved
in an interstellar warfare on a cosmic scale.
“For we do not wrestle against flesh and blood, but against the rulers,
against the authorities, against the cosmic powers over this present darkness,
against the spiritual forces of evil in the heavenly places. Therefore take up the whole armor of God,
that you may be able to withstand in the evil day, and having done all, to
stand firm.”[ii]
Our call to obedience transcends the transitory
characteristics of individual leaders who may themselves die, or be
transferred, or perhaps even betray their call.
For leaders to lead they also must be under obedience. People who don’t accept authority don’t
exercise it very well. The issues are larger
than personalities. In the Church we are
called to obedience for each battle, but each battle is part of a larger
action. That larger action is not to be
determined by the leaders nor by the will of the people, nor by those who make
the most noise. Rather it is determined
by the revealed will of God and by the action of the Holy Spirit revealed in
the ongoing tradition of the Church. “We
believe what has been believed always, everywhere, and by all.” Stepping outside of the teachings of Holy
Scripture and the cautionary tradition of the Church, is not prophetic action, nor
innovation, it is very simply disobedience.
We are, each of us, called to obedience. For the call of each individual soldier of
the Lord has very little to do with the plans and policies, rebellions and
stubbornness that we see vaunted in the media and so many blogs. You are called to obedience, but it may not
be what you would like to hear. You are
first of all called to obey the simple fundamentals of the faith. God has said, “You shall be holy, for I the
Lord your God am holy.”[iii]
For most of us obedience has to do with simple
everyday things. We are called to
serve. Service is the simple basic form
of obedience. So strong is this service
that Saint Paul calls himself a “bondservant.”
He is bound under obedience and he has willingly taken that obedience
upon himself, because he knows that disobedience ultimately leads to death, his
death, and even ours. The battle we are
engaged in is no joke, but a real action with real enemies and very real
casualties.
You also are called to obedience within the Church
and within the family in simple things.
Make the coffee, move the chairs, clean the kitchen, do the laundry,
fold the clothes, take the trash out. You
are called to humble service. It is in
surrender to the reality of the little things that need to be done that we find
the necessary place of obedience.
There should never be a time in the life of the
Church, or the life of the family when you think that you are too busy, or too
important to serve. There should never
be a time in either the Church or the family when people sit back and say, “Let
George do it, that’s not my job. I have
more important things to do.” Part of the
difficulty is that we want something glorious to do, and what the Lord is
saying is polish your boots, or even better, polish your brother’s boots.
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