Here’s a word seldom heard in our day and age, obedience. A few weeks ago I was browsing in the gift shop of St. Patrick’s Cathedral and came upon a book by Timothy Cardinal Dolan, “Priests for the Third Millennium.” Being in the seminary business, I bought the book to get his take on what kind of clergy the church needs in this 21st century. Besides, he grew up in St. Louis, is fondly remembered, and wore a Cardinal’s baseball cap long before the Pope gave him his other cardinal hat.
Cardinal Dolan wrote, “It is precisely in obedience that we are most countercultural: in a society that urges us to keep all options open, not to be tied down, always ready to move on to something more attractive, to place conditions on all pledges, to protect our own interests above all else, to move up and make more, to demand rights and resist restrictions – we pledge complete obedience to one man and one confined area of God’s vineyard. That’s obedience. That’s countercultural!” (77)
Bible passages about obedience are many. Luke 2:52 reports 12-year-old Jesus “went down with them (his parents) to Nazareth and was submissive to them.” In Gethsemane Jesus prayed, “Not my will, but yours be done” (Luke 22:42). Paul writes that Jesus “being found in human form…humbled himself by becoming obedient to the point of death, even death on a cross” (Philippians 2:4). In Deuteronomy 13:4 Moses told the people, “You shall walk after the Lord your God and fear him and keep his commandments and obey his voice.” Samuel told Saul, “To obey is better than sacrifice” (1 Samuel 15:22). Just before the ascension, Jesus gave the Great Commission saying, “teaching them to observe all that I have commanded you” (Matthew 28:20). And there are many more.
I wonder how our culture would change if we took obedience to God more seriously. “We must obey God rather than men” (Acts 5:29) Cardinal Dolan: “However, as much as we recognize its pivotal importance, obedience is one of the most difficult virtues to practice, because it goes against a power that makes the neutron bomb look like a Bic lighter: the stubborn, proud human will.” (76)
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