The Varieties of Religious Experience - Penn State University

The Varieties of Religious Experiencetively all their reasons for recommending it, the mixture sounds toour ears rather odd.“One of the great consolations of the monastic life,” says a Jesuitauthority, “is the assurance we have that in obeying we can commitno fault. The Superior may commit a fault in commanding you todo this thing or that, but you are certain that you commit no faultso long as you obey, because God will only ask you if you have dulyperformed what orders you received, and if you can furnish a clearaccount in that respect, you are absolved entirely. Whether the thingsyou did were opportune, or whether there were not something betterthat might have been done, these are questions not asked of you,but rather of your Superior. The moment what you did was doneobediently, God wipes it out of your account, and charges it to theSuperior. So that Saint Jerome well exclaimed, in celebrating theadvantages of obedience, ‘Oh, sovereign liberty! Oh, holy and blessedsecurity by which one become almost impeccable!’“Saint John Climachus is of the same sentiment when he calls obediencean excuse before God. In fact, when God asks why you havedone this or that, and you reply, it is because I was so ordered by mySuperiors, God will ask for no other excuse. As a passenger in a goodvessel with a good pilot need give himself no farther concern, butmay go to sleep in peace, because the pilot has charge over all, and‘watches for him’; so a religious person who lives under the yoke ofobedience goes to heaven as if while sleeping, that is, while leaningentirely on the conduct of his Superiors, who are the pilots of hisvessel, and keep watch for him continually. It is no small thing, of atruth, to be able to cross the stormy sea of life on the shoulders and inthe arms of another, yet that is just the grace which God accords tothose who live under the yoke of obedience. Their Superior bears alltheir burdens… . A certain grave doctor said that he would ratherspend his life in picking up straws by obedience, than by his ownresponsible choice busy himself with the loftiest works of charity, becauseone is certain of following the will of God in whatever one maydo from obedience, but never certain in the same degree of anythingwhich we may do of our own proper movement.”187187 Alfonso Rodriguez, S. J.: Pratique de la Perfection Chretienne, Partiii., Treatise v., ch. x.282