QUOTATION: Obedience to the Pope

He who rebels against our Father, Christ on earth, is condemned to death, for that which we do to him, we do to Christ in heaven – we honor Christ if we honor the pope, we dishonor Christ if we dishonor the pope… I tell you that God will and has so commanded that even if the priests and the pastors of the Church and Christ on earth were incarnate devils, it is seemly that we are obedient and subject to them, not for their sake, but for the sake of God, out of obedience to Him, for He wills that we should act thus.

--St. Catherine of Siena

QUOTATION: Obedience

In an age in which emancipation is regarded as the true heart of redemption, and freedom appears as the right to do everything I myself want to, and only that, the concept of obedience is, so to speak, anathematized. It has been excised, not merely from our vocabulary, but from our thinking. Yet this conception of freedom is the very thing that has made people incapable of living with one another, incapable of loving. It enslaves people. That is why obedience, correctly understood, has to be rehabilitated and be made effective in the heart of Christian and priestly spirituality.

--Pope Benedict XVI, “The Ministry and Life of Priests”, Pilgrim Fellowship of Faith

QUOTATION: Obedience to the Superior

The superior is to be obeyed not because he is prudent, or good, or qualified by any other gift of God, but because he holds the place and the authority of God, as Eternal Truth has said: He who hears you, hears me; and he who rejects you, rejects me [Luke 10:16]. Nor on the contrary, should he lack prudence, is he to be the less obeyed in that in which he is superior, since he represents Him who is infallible wisdom, and who will supply what is wanting in His minister, nor, should he lack goodness or other desirable qualities, since Christ our Lord, having said, the scribes and the Pharisees sit on the chair of Moses, adds, therefore, whatever they shall tell you, observe and do: but do not act according to their works [Matt. 23:2-3].

--St. Ignatius Loyola, Letter to the Members of the Society in Portugal, 1556

QUOTATION: Obedience

Now, it seems to me that obedience seeks to be blind, and is blind in two ways: in the first it belongs to the inferior to submit his understanding, when there is no question of sin, and to do what is commanded of him; in the second it is also the inferior's duty, once the superior commands or has commanded something, to represent to the superior whatever considerations or disadvantages may occur to him, and to do so humbly and simply, without any attempt to draw the superior to either side, so that afterwards he can follow, with peace of mind, the way pointed out to him or commanded.

--St. Ignatius Loyola, Letter to Fr. Giovanni Battista Viola, 1542.

QUOTATION: Obedience

Those who obey their superiors with the conviction that they are obeying God elevate their obedience by this view of faith, so that it becomes one of the most eminent acts of the virtue of religion that we can elicit in this world, because it is addressed directly to God hidden under the veil of a person frail and mortal but endowed with divine authority.

--St. Jean Baptiste de la Salle, Meditations 

QUOTATION: Obedience

All the anxiety of scrupulous persons consists in the fear lest, in what they do, they are not acting with scruple merely, but with real doubt as to the act being simple, and are therefore incurring sin. But the chief thing they ought to consider is this: that he who acts in obedience to a learned and pious confessor, acts not only with no doubt, but with the greatest security that can be had upon earth, on the divine words of Jesus Christ, that he who hears his ministers is as though he heard himself: He that heareth you heareth Me.

--St. Alphonsus Liguori, The Way of Salvation and Perfection

QUOTATION: Obedience

Force yourself to be obedient, even in the smallest things that appear so inconsequential; this will make it easier to be obedient in the larger things.

--St. Philip Neri

QUOTATION: Inferiority

It is not true that to be humiliated is to be inferior. It is not true that to be subject to one’s husband is to be inferior. If you read the Gospel of St. Luke when Christ was found in the Temple in Jerusalem and then went back to Nazareth with Mary and Joseph, it is said “He was subject to them”.

--Alice von Hildebrand, “The Secular War on the Supernatural.”

QUOTATION: We Must Obey God Rather Than Men

The one only reason which men have for not obeying [their rulers] is when anything is demanded of them which is openly repugnant to the natural or the divine law, for it is equally unlawful to command to do anything in which the law of nature or the will of God is violated. If, therefore, it should happen to anyone to be compelled to prefer one or the other, viz., to disregard either the commands of God or those of rulers, he must obey Jesus Christ, who commands us to “give to Caesar the things that are Caesar’s, and to God the things that are God’s,” (Mt 22:21), and must reply courageously after the example of the Apostles: “We ought to obey God rather than men” (Acts 5:29). And yet there is no reason why those who so behave themselves should be accused of refusing obedience; for, if the will of rulers is opposed to the will and the laws of God, they themselves exceed the bounds of their own power and pervert justice; nor can their authority then be valid, which, when there is no justice, is null.

 --Pope Leo XIII, Diuturnum illud, 15

QUOTATION: Obedience

Obedience is the test of our love of God. His laws are God’s way of enabling us to prove our love for Him; there is no obedience where there is no love, there is much obedience where there is much love.

--Fr. John Hardon, “St. Joseph - Foster Father of Jesus”

QUOTATION: Obedience Training

If you would acquire a ready obedience to superiors, accustom yourself to yield to your equals, giving way to their opinions where nothing wrong is involved, without arguing or peevishness; and adapt yourself easily to the wishes of your inferiors as far as you reasonably can, and avoid the exercise of stern authority so long as they do well.

--St. Francis de Sales

QUOTATION: Obedience as Sacrifice

Obedience is a penance of the soul, and for that reason a sacrifice more acceptable than all corporal penances. Thence it happens that God loves more the least degree of obedience in you, than all the other services you may think to render him.

--St. John of the Cross

QUOTATION: Ecumenical Councils

In Ecumenical Councils there are many lively debates and a profound search for the truth through reasoning, theological argument and council interventions; however once a subject has been debated, it is up to the Council Fathers – that is, the Bishops and especially the Pope who is the Chief of the Bishops – to decide, to reach a conclusion, to determine the mind of the Council. Once their determination has been made, everyone should acquiesce in it and accept it, not because of the arguments that were advanced in favor of the final determination, or the research that preceded it, but rather because of the authority of the Holy Spirit. Invisibly presiding at Ecumenical Councils, the Holy Spirit it is who really judges and determines by means of the mouths of His servants who have been established by Him as the Pastors of Christendom. All the reasoning, theological argument and council interventions are made, as it were, in front of the Church; while the actual decisions and determinations of the Council Fathers are made in the sanctuary, where the Holy Spirit does speak through the mouths of the visible heads of the local churches, just as Jesus Christ promised.

--St. Francis de Sales

QUOTATION: The Faithful Servant

He who relies on theoretical knowledge alone is not yet a faithful servant: a faithful servant is one who expresses his faith in Christ through obedience to His commandments.

--St. Mark the Ascetic

QUOTATION: Obedience

For our obedience to be cheerful and prompt, we have to be convinced that it is Jesus that we obey.

--Mother Teresa of Calcutta, Where There is Love, There is God, Brian Kolodiejchuk, M.C., Ed.

QUOTATION: Obedience

Yes, dear brethren, we may safely say that the Saints found all their happiness in keeping the commandments, and that they would sooner have endured martyrdom than to transgress them: and did not the martyrs suffer tortures and death, just because they would not transgress the commandments of God? What shame for us then, dear brethren, when at the judgment day we will face these martyrs; we who so often are prompted in our actions by even the mere thought of "What will the world say?"

--St. Jean Vianney, the Cure of Ars

QUOTATION: Erring in Ignorance

When men err in ignorance, following closely their own notions of right and wrong, though these notions are mistaken,—great as is their sin, if they might have possessed themselves of truer notions (and very great as was St. Paul's sin, because he certainly might have learned from the Old Testament far clearer and diviner doctrine than the tradition of the Pharisees),—yet such men are not left by the God of all grace. God leads them on to the light in spite of their errors in faith, if they continue strictly to obey what they believe to be His will.

--Blessed John Henry Newman, "St. Paul's Conversion Viewed in reference to His Office", Parochial and Plain Sermons, Vol. 2

QUOTATION: Christ's Obedience

Adore now the obedience of Our Lord in the Blessed Sacrament. What promptitude! What passive, blind, absolute submission, without condition or reserve! The priest is His master, whom He always obeys, whether he be holy, fervent, or not. He obeys all the Faithful who oblige Him to come to them by Communion, when and as often as they present themselves. His obedience is lasting, constant, ever ready! And He is the Son of God, who rules, the whole universe! And it is. He, His power, that gives life and preserves it to those same people whom He wills thus to obey with the absolute submission of a slave. He has no more right over His actions, over His Body, nor over His life itself, for He delivers up even His life!      

--St. Peter Julian Eymard

QUOTATION: Conditional Obedience to Christ

There are many religious Catholics whose readiness to change is merely a conditional one. They exert themselves to keep the commandments and to get rid of such qualities as they have recognized to be sinful. But they lack the will and the readiness to become new men all in all, to break with all purely natural standards, to view all things in a supernatural light.

They prefer to evade the act of metanoia: a true conversion of heart. Hence with an undisturbed conscience they cling to all that appears to them legitimate by natural standards. Their conscience permits them to remain entrenched in their self-assertion. For example, they do not feel the obligation of loving their enemies; they let their pride have its way within certain limits; they insist on the right of giving play to their natural reactions in answer to any humiliation.

They maintain as self-evident their claim to the world’s respect, they dread being looked upon as ‘fools of Christ’; they accord a certain role to human respect, and are anxious to stand justified in the eyes of the world also. They are not ready for a total breach with the world and its standards; they are swayed by certain conventional considerations; nor do they refrain from ‘letting themselves go’ within certain limits. There are various types and degrees of this reserved form of the readiness to change; but common to them all is the characteristic of a merely conditional obedience to the Call and an ultimate abiding by one’s natural self.

--Dietrich von Hildebrand, Transformation in Christ

QUOTATION: The Fourth Degree of Obedience

Another virtue, which may be considered a fourth degree of obedience, is conformity to the divine will in all things, This enables us to accept from the hands of God, with equal submission, honor or ignominy, obscurity or renown, stripes or caresses, health or sickness, life or death; for we look, not at our chastisements, but at Him who inflicts them through love of us. An earthly father loves his child when he corrects him no less than when he caresses him. Does his love bear any comparison to the love of the Heavenly Father? Let us realize, then, that all that comes from His hand is for our welfare, and we shall become so firmly established in submission to His holy will that He may mold us according to His good pleasure, as clay in the hands of the potter.

--Louis de Granada, The Sinner's Guide