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The Excellence of This Virtue
obedience is better than sacrifices; and to hearken, rather
than to offer the fat of rams. Because it is like the sin
of witchcraft to rebel; and like the crime of idolatry to
refuse to obey.
The astute reader here may protest, “But wasn’t the
sacrificial system established by God Himself? How,
then, can this assertion be true that God doesn’t want
our sacrifices? If sacrifice is God’s will, and it clearly
is, isn’t it obedience to God’s will to offer sacrifice?”
This is a challenging dilemma but one that Jesus helps
us to clear up.
For the answer, we can look to Jesus in Matthew 7,
where He works to correct this same problem in His
disciples. He clearly sees that some who are following
Him are doing so for the wrong reasons. He says to
them (in general), “Let me show you what your final
judgment will look like. You will call me Lord. You will
have prophesied in my name. You will have cast out
demons in my name. You will have done mighty works
in my name.” He then says, “I will say to you: Depart
from me, I never knew you; depart from me, evildoers.”
Here we have the same fundamental dilemma that
St. Alphonsus proposes. Is it not God’s will to call Jesus
Lord? Is it not God’s will to foretell and forthtell the
truths of God? Is it not God’s will to cast out demons
and do mighty works in His name? The answer can be
found in one word of this passage in the twenty-third
verse: the word knew. The word in Greek is the same
word that the Jews used to translate the love and union
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