Summary of the Morrow’s Meditation
We learnt this morning from Jesus in the temple the spirit of sacrifice; we shall learn from Him to-morrow the spirit of obedience, and in order to dispose us to enter into this spirit we shall see, 1st, that there is nothing more excellent than obedience; 2d, nothing more sanctifying; 3d, nothing more consoling. We will then make the resolution: 1st, to perform all our actions in a spirit of obedience to the good pleasure of God; 2d, never to do anything from impulse or natural taste for it; as well as never to omit anything from disgust or repugnance. Our spiritual nosegay shall be the words of Our Lord on the day of His presentation: “Behold, I come to do Thy will, O God!” (Heb. x. 9.)
Meditation for the Morning
Let us adore the marvellous obedience of Jesus in the mystery of His presentation. He obeys His Father, whose will He comes to perform. O my God, He says, Thy will is Mine; I have placed it in the midst of my heart (Ps. xxxix. 9), so that it may regulate all its movements. He obeys Moses, His servant, whose law He comes to execute. Forty days after his birth, Moses had said, the first-born child shall be offered in the temple; five shekels shall be the price of his redemption; and what Moses had said Jesus executed. He obeys His mother, to whose hands He abandons Himself, so that she may do with Him as she wills. Oh, how greatly such obedience deserves our respect and our praise!
First Point
Nothing is more Excellent than Obedience.
The world places its greatness in independence and liberty; to obey is in its opinion the portion of slaves, the condition of the miserable; and there is nothing finer, greater, more worthy of envy than to do our own will in everything. Jesus, the Eternal Wisdom, thinks very differently. The proof of it is to be found in the mystery of to-day and in His whole life, which is nothing but a continual exercise of obedience. Never does He seek Himself in anything (Rom. xv. 3); the will of His Father is always His (Luke xxii. 42). In truth, there is nothing in heaven or on earth more excellent than to have, as the rule of our conduct, not the caprices of human will, but the very will of God, which is the rule and the delight of saints and angels. Then the whole of life is ennobled and rendered great; and we are no longer smaller in little things, nor greater in great, because the will of God, which is the rule, the price, and the merit of it, is always equally excellent. Then the least action done with the aim and for the love of this holy will surpasses the most brilliant labors inspired by self-love, and that by the whole distance which separates the divine from the human will. Thus are raised to an incomparable degree of excellence all our actions; even the most ordinary, our repasts even, our recreations and our walks, even our sleep, our silence and our inaction, when it is in the order of the will of God and when we accept it in this view. Oh, then what a great and wonderful thing obedience is! Have we, up to the present time, learnt to appreciate it as it deserves? and do we esteem happy the positions in which we obey, and do we dread those in which we command and are able to do our own will?
Second Point
Nothing is more Sanctifying than Obedience.
1st. It corrects all the digressions of self-will, that perfidious and deceitful will which sees objects only through the prism of the passions and of petty interests, and changes the true color of them; inconstant and flighty, what it desires to-day it does not care for to-morrow; uncertain and irresolute, it often does not know to what to attach itself; capricious, its desires are devoid of reason and against all reason; it does not know how to yield, and becomes more and more obstinate in proportion to its being contradicted; haughty and imperious, it aspires to throwing off the yoke and to rule; violent and hasty, it is impatient, murmurs, rebels, if its desires are not promptly satisfied; lastly, an enemy to the law because the law annoys it, it is inclined to indulge in everything which is forbidden. To obedience alone is it given to correct so many digressions from the right way: this blind will, obedience directs; this inconstant will, it renders stable; this irresolute will, it makes determined; this capricious will, it renders steadfast; this obstinate will, it bends; this haughty will, it makes submissive; this violent and hasty will, it represses; this perverse will, it restrains or puts again in the right path out of which it has wandered. 2d. After having corrected the evil, obedience enables a man to do all that is right. In it consists all perfection, humility, abnegation, patience, union with God, the life of faith, which makes all our acts supernatural; the life of hope, which is nourished by a continual succession of merits; the life of charity, of which obedience forms the most excellent practice. Therein, lastly, is the source of all graces with the most assured means of success in all good works. Is it thus that we look upon obedience? Do we entertain an aversion for self-will, and do we take pleasure in making a generous and continual sacrifice of it to God?
Third Point
Nothing is more Consoling than Obedience.
He who follows the bent of his own will is unhappy. The past often leaves in its train repentance for what we have done, disapprobation of its false wisdom, regret for its false calculations. The present saddens us; it offers to the soul desires which are not satisfied, a discontented will, weariness and disgust. The future troubles us: what shall I do? what will become of me? But with obedience all anxiety disappears. Then there are no regrets for the past; he who has commanded may have deceived himself, he who has obeyed has always done well, and his conscience has no right to address a single reproach to him. Then there is no more sadness in the present. I am where God wills I should be; I am doing what God wills; it is paradise upon earth. Then there is no more anxiety about the future. What shall I become? What God wills. Where shall I go? Where God wills. By means of these sole words calm and peace are established in the soul, together with an ineffable joy. Good pleasure of God, where dost Thou will me to go? I hasten there, I fly there, here I am! I let myself be led by Thee as a child by the hand of its mother. O delicious life, O foretaste of paradise! What a beautiful death will follow such a life, when, looking back on the past, we shall see every day filled with the divine pleasure! How well we shall be received in heaven, which will resound with the song of victory (Prov. xxi. 28).
Resolutions and spiritual nosegay as above.