Obedience!

All religious men and women take a vow of obedience. To some non-Catholics this seems inhuman ‑ giving up your will to the will of someone else.

But to the religious it is a tremendous consolation. It means that when the command comes from the Superior, it is the will of God for them. They hear the voice of God in the voice of the Superior.

And the vow is very reasonable. If the subject believes that the command is not the wisest way of proceeding, he can “represent”. He can explain his reasons to the Superior. If the command is not withdrawn, he follows it, convinced that the Superior can make mistakes, but God does not.

Among the Jesuits, the classic example of “representation” is Lainez. He was Spanish by birth, Jewish in ancestry, one of the most brilliant theologians in the Council of Trent. At that time, the Church was having trouble in Germany. Loyola, the Superior General, decided to appoint Lainez as the Provincial of Germany.

Lainez represented; strongly. He said to Loyola: “Please, no! I am alright as a scholar, as a theologian, but no good as an administrator! I have no talent for administration. I will make more mistakes than you can count!”

But Loyola said: “Your reputation at the Council was excellent. All the Bishops respect you. They will treat all our men with reverence, because of you.” So he made Lainez the Provincial.

And sure enough, early in his German career, Lainez disagreed completely with the German Cardinal. He climbed up three flights of stairs, stormed into the Cardinal’s room, and called him a name in Spanish which was unforgivable. What that name was, we do not know, because even Broderick, who was frank and honest in his printing, would not publish it. He just said: “unforgivable!”

Seething with anger, the Cardinal wrote to the Holy Father, telling him abut this. The Pope in turn wrote to Loyola, saying: “Please do something about this wild man that you have in Germany!”

Loyola wrote to Lainez — the strongest letter he had ever written. He accused Lainez of ten major faults, any one of which would merit expulsion from the Society of Jesus.

Lainez wrote back, by return mail, saying: “To the ten faults you have listed in your letter, I plead guilty to every one of them. And if you want me to go into a monastery and do penance for them for the rest of my life, I will do it. . . . . But, when you were planning to make me Provincial of Germany, I told you that I was absolutely worthless as a Superior, and still you appointed me. . . . . So may I suggest that the blame for all this trouble is — at least partly — yours!”

Lainez did everything right. When he was appointed, he represented as strongly as he could. When the command was not withdrawn, he obeyed. When he made mistakes, and was accused of them, he admitted every one. . . . . The vow was never supposed to make a man sinless. It only added a heavy obligation before God, which Lainez admitted.

The next year, Loyola died. . . . . And Lainez was elected as the Second Superior General of the Society of Jesus.

* * *

It is not only the members of religious orders who are bound by obedience. Just this week — on Wednesday, August 6 — I was talking to a very good friend of mine. She has terminal cancer, stage four. It began as cancer of the breast. But it has metastasized to the liver, and to the bones. She is living in acute pain.

Very quietly, she said: “When you are in pain for some time, you begin to understand things that you never understood before. For instance, at night, when I can not sleep, and when the pain will not stop, I begin to see why some people are attracted to mercy killing.”

She said: “When I take the pain killers, and it gives me just three hours of sleep, I am so grateful to God! You know, the real challenge is how to obey peacefully, cheerfully, joyously, waiting for God’s call.

She should be bed ridden. But she isn’t. She is still walking around. her mind should have begun to wander, but she is alert, alive, and smiling!. . . . . Her pain killers are supposed to last only 12 hours. But she goes 36 hours on one pill! She asked her doctor: Why?

Her doctor said: “I don’t know. . . . I understand medical science. But we are on a different level here. There is a power working in you that is beyond me.”. . . . . What is working in her is the grace of God. She is living on a spiritual level, trying to obey the will of God, waiting patiently for his call.

She is doing the same thing that a religious man or woman is doing — obeying God, with all her heart under greater hardship.

The Filipino, and the Filipina, have been touched by the hand of God.