TWENTY-FIRST LESSON
On Obedience
"Children, obey your parents in all this; for this is well pleasing to the Lord."—St. Paul, Colossians 3:20.
Let us now return, my children, to a topic on which we have said but a few words; let us speak of the virtue of obedience, this first and earliest virtue of childhood, a virtue so dear to our Saviour, that he practised it until death.
How much can be said to children about obedience! and how little is this virtue understood even by those who believe they practise it, who imagine they are dutiful because they do not openly rebel against their parent's will, or against their master's orders! These children obey, it is true, but slowly and unwillingly—they submit, but because they can hardly do otherwise. This obedience, so to say forced, is, I fear, without merit in God's eyes; and cannot have any good effect on your temper.
The true obedience, of which Jesus Christ has left us a divine example, is prompt and entire, unaccompanied by remarks or murmurings.
To obey promptly, is to execute immediately the commands of our superiors—it is to obey directly, instead of putting off until the morrow, and making up our minds to obey merely from the fear of punishment. Remember, my children, how prompt was the obedience of Joseph and Mary, when warned by the Angel God sent them: they left Bethlehem with the infant Jesus, on a cold winter's night, and fled to Egypt.
To obey entirely, is to obey without reserve, and not merely to a certain point, and for some things only. What would be the merit of obedience, my dear children, if we were to perform a duty only when it has nothing unpleasant in it? But to submit to all orders given, be they easy or difficult to accomplish, agreeable or tedious and painful, then is our obedience entire and generous.
Such was the obedience of Abraham when, by God's order, he consented to immolate his only son. What a difference, my children, between the slight privations that are imposed on you, and the cruel sacrifice ordered to this poor father! and yet how far is your obedience from the submission of Abraham!
To submit without a word, without arguing the point. Ah! it is that above all which appears so very hard. You do not wish to resist your mother seriously, certainly not, but before obeying her, you raise a thousand difficulties, you give a thousand reasons; it is a struggle, almost a quarrel, to free yourself from this duty of obedience, or at least to learn the reason, the why and the wherefore of everything ordered you: as if your parents, my children, were obliged to render you an account of the use they think fit to make of their authority.
It was not thus that young Samuel behaved in former times. One night, whilst sleeping in the Temple, he heard a voice, which cried three different times: Samuel! Samuel! It was God who spoke. But the child, ignorant as yet of the will of the Lord, supposed he was called by Eli the high priest, and he hurried to him, being each time sent back by the latter. Samuel, however, persisted, and without making a single remark on the order that must have seemed so strange to him, came back again and again, repeating: "Here I am, Father, because thou calledst me."
We will end by recommending you to obey without murmuring, that is to say without those complainings, which unwilling children indulge in, as it were to make up for the vexation of being compelled to obey. This unfortunate tendency generally leads to ill-temper, sometimes even gives rise to disrespectful answers, and if it does not lead to downright disobedience, it at least takes away all the merit of submission.
Did our Lord allow a single murmur to escape his lips? Did he utter the slightest complaint, when, by His Father's will, He felt such excruciating tortures? Why is your obedience, my dear children, so often compulsory, and wanting in the qualities we have just mentioned? It is because your heart itself is not submissive, it is because all authority seems an annoyance to you. You are already impatient to reach the time when you will be no longer children, thinking that then you will not be obliged to obey any one. All men, nevertheless, young or old, wealthy or poor, have superiors to whom they must submit. Children obey their parents and their teachers; wives their husbands, men the chiefs placed above them, servants their masters, subjects the king, Christians the Lord. Grown people, whose independence you envy, those at least who act rightly—and they are the only ones, I suppose, whom you would wish to resemble—grown people, when by some chance they have no superiors. still obey: they submit to duty, to reason, and that, my children, is often neither agreeable nor easy.
Since then, under all circumstances, and at all periods of your life, you must bend to the will of others, or to a sense of duty, begin early while it is yet easy to you to practise submission. May it please God, my dear children, that in the whole course of your life, you may never meet with more severe authority than that of your present superiors.
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