Obedience is an essential of the religious life, but it is no less essentially the virtue of the Christian life: it is an essential for all those who would follow Christ. The Gospel story, indeed, reads in that sense like a Greek tragedy, for there is a persistent insistence upon the idea of necessity working its way throughout. When watching the tragic plays of the great poets, we feel that the characters are like puppets in the hands of some higher power: struggle as they may against the fatal end, they are driven resistlessly to the divine purpose: the human will is forced to accept the divine. Of course, as Christians, we know this to be untrue, because the will is free: yet, for all that, we are assured that the plan of God is never disarranged. "I come to do the will of Him that sent me" is a refrain which comes repeatedly in the Fourth Gospel; and as a counterpoint, we have His relief when all is ended: "I have finished the the work Thou gavest Me to do." It was this, too, that His last conscious breath confessed "It is consummated." Even in the Synoptic Gospels (as the first three Gospels are called), where the dramatic side of His life is obscured, or at least not brought out in full detail, we read His saying to the protesting Apostles, "It is necessary that the Son of Man should die." His life, then, for Him was planned on simple lines: it meant that He came into the world to do a certain definite work, and that He was straitened until it should be accomplished. His idea of goodness consisted almost wholly in this immediate subjection to His Father. His model prayer contained it; His own prayer in the Garden meant little else; His chosen ones were not those who said "Lord, Lord!" but "who did the will of the Father."
What, then, became a dominant principle in our Lord's life must become equally the dominant principle of mine obedience: it helps to make life so much simpler, and the good life a thing of practical clearness. First of all, I have to get pretty clearly into my head what it is that God requires of me; and this itself means a good deal. I find myself a child in a family, a citizen in a State, a worker under some employer, a Catholic member of a church. Here, then, straightaway I am subject to four separate authorities, and have to discover the rules and requirements of each; I have to find out for myself what orders these four authorities lay upon me, and the limits of the obedience they may claim. There will be a great easing of my troubles when I have become convinced of these things. It shows me some at least of my pathway, and prevents to a certain extent my stumbling. I have, therefore, to discover these four leading sources of governance, their actual and binding commands, and then to fulfil them to the best of my ability. Secondly, it will be of importance for me to find out further to what vocation God calls me: for I am convinced that there is a certain work in the world that God has created me to perform for Him each has his vocation, and each has his capacities for that vocation. God wants me for some purpose. What is that purpose? Unless I can find it out, I cannot ever say, "I have finished the work Thou gavest me to do." This vocation will be disclosed to me in different ways, and it will be added to indifferently throughout life by countless opportunities for doing good that will be continually opening to me. I must obey in lawful command those lawfully set above me, and must follow the calling marked out for me by God.
Obedience is, indeed, a law in all finite things, for the Infinite can obey nothing but Itself. But in the grades of finite creation "we may observe that exactly in proportion to the majesty of things in the scale of being is the completeness of their obedience to the laws that are set over them. Gravitation is less quietly, less instantly, obeyed by a grain of dust than it is by sun and moon: and the ocean falls and flows under influences which the lake and river do not recognise." Ruskin's physics may, in this. example, be not entirely accurate, but they form an allegory, for it is certainly true that the higher in the scale of being, the more exacting the commands. Obedience, therefore, does not debase, but rather exalts mankind. It is the sign of the nearness of our approach to Christ, and in Christ it is the sign of the complete union between His will and intelligence and the will and intelligence of God the Father. The superman, whom our generation has been taught to honour by prophets of Prussia and the philosophers of our own Press, is placed above all law, unrestrained by morality or any other hampering influence. Yet when I analyze what it all means, I find that even the superman rests upon obedience, i.e. the obedience of others; and if this obedience is good for their characters, then it is justified as being beneficial; but if it spoils them, then the superman stands self-condemned. And if he himself, above all law, is to govern by his whim or fancy, then reason itself is overthrown and all the arguments in favour of his supremacy have lost their value. The Gospel of Anarchy is a contradiction, for it teaches the law that there is no law: but I, though the child "of an age that knows not how to obey," must endeavour to copy in my life the obedience of Christ.
- text taken from Meditations for Layfolk by Father Bede Jarrett, O.P.