The Obedience of Jesus

By Fr. Conor Donnelly

(Proofread)

In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.

My Lord and my God, I firmly believe that you are here, that you see me, that you hear me. I adore you with profound reverence. I ask your pardon for my sins and grace to make this time of prayer fruitful. My Immaculate Mother, Saint Joseph, my father and lord, my guardian angel, intercede for me.

We’re told in St. John, “My meat is to do the will of him who sent me; and to accomplish the task he gave me” (John 4:34).

After the meeting in the Temple, Jesus returns to Galilee with Mary and Joseph. We’re told, “He went down with them on their journey to Nazareth and lived there in subjection to them” (Luke 2:51). The Holy Spirit wanted to leave this fact clearly stated in the Gospel. Its source can only be Our Lady, who, time and time again, saw the silent obedience of her Son.

It is one of the few pieces of information we have from those years of hidden life: that Jesus obeyed them. St. Augustine comments, “Christ, to whom the universe is subject, was subject to them” (Augustine, Sermon 51,19).

To obey His Father, Jesus subjected Himself to those who, in His earthly life, were invested with authority; in the first place, His parents.

Our Lady must have reflected very often about Jesus’ obedience, which was extremely refined and, at the same time, very natural. St. Luke tells us immediately that “His Mother kept in her heart the memory of all this” (Luke 2:51).

The whole of Our Lord’s life was an act of obedience to the will of the Father. “What I do is always what pleases him” (John 8:29), He will tell us later on.

And on another occasion, He said clearly to His disciples: “My meat is to do the will of him who sent me; and to accomplish the task he gave me” (John 4:34).

Food is what gives energy for life. And Jesus tells us that obedience to the will of God—manifested in so many different ways—should be what nourishes and gives meaning to our lives. Without obedience, there is no growth in interior life, nor true development of the human person.

The Second Vatican Council says, “…obedience, far from lowering the dignity of the human person, leads it to maturity by extending the freedom of the sons of God” (Vatican II, Perfectae caritatis, Point 14, October 28, 1965).

God is not indifferent to any situation in our life. He’s waiting for a response from us at each moment, the response that coincides with His glory and our personal happiness. We are happy when we obey, because we are doing what Our Lord wants for us, which is what is best, although at times it costs us effort.

God’s will is shown to us through His Commandments, through those of His Church, through things that happen, and also, through those persons to whom we owe obedience. It’s a virtue that makes us very pleasing to God.

Scripture tells us of the disobedience of Saul to a command he had received from God. As a result of this, in spite of his victory over the Amalekites and the sacrifices which the king himself afterwards offered, the Lord repented of having made him king.

Through the mouth of Samuel the prophet He said to Saul, “The Lord loves obedience better than any sacrifice” (1 Sam. 15:22).

St. Gregory comments, “Rightly is obedience set before sacrifice, because through obedience we offer up our own will” (Gregory the Great, Morals). Through this virtue, we show our self-giving to God.

In the Gospel, we see how Our Lady obeys: she calls herself “the handmaid of the Lord” (Luke 1:38), showing that she has no other will other than that of God.

St. Joseph obeys—and always rapidly—whatever is commanded on the Lord’s behalf (cf. Matt. 2:13-15). Promptness in doing what is commanded is one of the qualities of true obedience.

The apostles, in spite of their limitations, know how to obey. Because they trust in Our Lord, they cast the net to the right of the boat where Jesus told them (John 21:6); and they make a great catch of fish, despite its not being the right time, and despite their earlier experience that day of there apparently not being a single fish in the lake.

Obedience, and faith in Our Lord’s word, works miracles. Many graces and fruits accompany obedience.

The ten lepers are cured by obeying the words of Our Lord: “‘Go and show yourselves to the priests,’ and thereupon, as they went, they were made clean” (Luke 17:14).

The same happened to the blind man on whose eyes Jesus put clay. “He said to him, ‘Away with you and wash in the pool of Siloe’ (a word which means Sent out). So he went and washed there and came back with his sight restored” (John 9:6-7).

St. Josemaría comments: “What an example of firm faith the blind man gives us—a living operative faith! [We can ask ourselves:] Do we respond like this when Our Lord commands, when so often we can’t see, when our soul is worried, and maybe the light is gone? What power could the water possibly contain that when the blind man’s eyes were moistened with it they were cured?

“Surely some mysterious eye ointment or precious medicine made up in the laboratory of some wise alchemist would have done better? But the man believed. He acted upon the command of God, and he returned with his eyes full of light” (cf. Josemaría Escrivá, Friends of God, Point 193).

How often we too are going to find the light in that person placed there by God to guide and cure us, if we are docile in obeying.

In the Acts of the Apostles, we read, “God gives the Holy Spirit to all who obey him” (Acts 5:32). The Gospels give us many examples of persons who knew how to obey: the servants at Cana in Galilee (John 2:7-8); the shepherds in Bethlehem (Luke 2:15-20); the kings (Matt. 2:1-12)—all received abundant grace from God.

One writer says, “Obedience makes our actions and our sufferings meritorious, in such a way that the latter, which could seem futile, can become very fruitful. One of the marvels performed by Our Lord is having made what was useless, like suffering, become so advantageous. He has glorified suffering through obedience and love. Obedience is great and heroic when one is ready to face death and ignominy in order to fulfill it” (Réginald Garrigou-Lagrange, The Three Ages of the Interior Life, Volume II).

The Second Vatican Council says, “To carry out the will of the Father, Christ inaugurated the kingdom of heaven on earth and revealed to us [the mystery of that kingdom]. By his obedience, he brought about our Redemption” (Vatican II, Lumen gentium, Point 3, November 21, 1964).

St. Paul tells us: “He lowered his own dignity, accepted an obedience which brought him to death, death on a Cross” (Phil. 2:8).

In Gethsemane, the obedience of Jesus reaches its culminating point, when He completely renounces His will to accept the burden of all the sins of the world and so to redeem us. “Father,” He says, “not as my will is, but as yours” (Mark 14:36).

We should not be surprised then that when we embrace obedience, we find the Cross. Obedience demands, for love of God, the renunciation of our self and of our most intimate will. However, Jesus helps and makes the way easier if we are humble.

St. Teresa of Ávila says, “Once the Lord told me that I was not obeying, unless I was determined to suffer. I must fix my eyes on all that he had suffered and I should find everything easy” (Teresa of Ávila, Life).

Christ obeys for love. This is the meaning of Christian obedience: that which we owe God and His Commandments, that which we owe the Church and our parents—their commands and those of the Magisterium of the Church—and that which affects all those very intimate things of our soul.

In every case, more or less directly, we are obeying God, through the authorities. And Our Lord does not want unwilling servants, but children who want to do His will.

Obedience, which always involves subjection and self-giving, is not a lack of freedom or maturity. There are bonds which enslave and there are bonds which liberate. The rope which attaches a climber to his companions is not a bond which impedes, but a safety link which prevents him from falling into the abyss. And the ligaments which join the parts of the body are not bonds which hamper our movements, but a guarantee that they can be performed freely, harmoniously, and firmly.

On the contrary, true freedom is threatened by disordered sensuality, narrow-mindedness originating in selfishness, and the desire of doing one’s will. These obstacles are overcome by obedience, which raises and broadens one’s personality.

Obedience also brings about true formation of character and great peace of the soul—the fruits of sacrificing and giving up one’s own will for a higher good. We acquire true freedom by serving God through obedience: to serve God is to reign.

The liturgy says, “We ask you, Lord, that we who rejoice in obeying the commands of Christ, the King of the universe, may live with him forever in the kingdom of heaven” (Roman Missal, Prayer After Communion).

We’re told that “Jesus grew in wisdom and in age and in grace before God and men” (Luke 2:52). In that brief verse St. Luke sums up the years Jesus spent in Nazareth. He loved the Lord because He was a perfect man whose every passing year was accompanied by a steady growth and manifestation of His wisdom and grace.

In His human nature Jesus grew like any of us. His maturing in wisdom must be understood as the growth in knowledge that was acquired from the things round about Him, from His teachers, from the experience of life that every human being gathers in the course of his growing up.

In the little school at Nazareth, He learned the Sacred Scriptures, with the classical commentaries which usually accompanied their exposition.

We are struck by the sight of Jesus reading the Old Testament and learning what is said about the Messiah: that is to say, about Himself. We have to think of how He spoke of the Scriptures with His Mother. Joseph, the man of the house, would listen to the conversations of them with incomparable attention and wonder, sometimes intervening in the dialogue himself.

Jesus learned many things from Joseph: among other things, the trade by which he earned his living and by which He maintained the household when St. Joseph left this world.

The Blessed Virgin was to make a profound impression on her Son: she influenced Him in His way of being human, in His gestures, His words and manner of speaking, in the very prayers that every Jew learned from His parents’ lips.

Besides the human knowledge that grows with age, there were two other kinds of knowledge in Jesus. In the first place, the knowledge the Blessed have of the beatific vision of the Divine Essence was His by reason of His human nature being conjoined with His Divine nature in the one Person of God the Son, the Second Person of the Blessed Trinity. That knowledge, proper to God, could not grow: He possessed it in its fullness.

The Navarre Bible says Jesus also had an infused knowledge which perfected His intelligence and by means of which He knew all things, including those that were hidden. He could read the minds and hearts of men. That knowledge was capable of increase.

At times, Our Lord asks questions like, “What is your name?” (Mark 5:9) “How long have you suffered from this sickness?” (Mark 9:21) “How much bread do you have?” (Mark 6:38). At other times, He was surprised and wondered, we’re told (cf. Matt. 8:10).

For though He possessed the complete truths of divine knowledge, He wanted and chose to live a completely human existence. He was not pretending when He showed surprise and wonder, for those are profound and intimate human reactions, proper to and consistent with human nature.

We, too, must grow in the knowledge of God and of His plans for salvation. We mustn’t grow weary in our process of formation and our knowledge of doctrine. To know the Lord better is to come to understand Him better, and from this relationship of understanding will arise an ever more fruitful love.

St. Cyril says that when discussing the growth of Jesus, Divine Wisdom required that the Redeemer should be like us in all things (Cyril of Alexandria, One in Christ). Our maturity in years must be accompanied by a progressive increase in human virtue and the supernatural life.

The growth Our Lord requires of us is unique in that instead of leaving our youth behind us as we do in our natural life, we renew and refresh it.

In our natural life as human beings, the “not yet” of our youth reaches a point where it becomes the “not already!” of our old age. The opposite happens in our supernatural life: the Christian life never grows old. At any time I can turn towards God “who gives joy to my youth” (Ps. 43:4), even in old age.

God keeps young those who love Him. Perhaps we have known saintly people who, though old in years, have had great interior youthfulness of spirit born from a faithful relationship to Christ and manifested in all their acts.

Growth comes from grace, obtained especially through the sacraments and continual practice of the virtues. Grace, deposited in our hearts like a seed, struggles to grow and brings us to its fullness (Eph. 4:13).

“The obstacle it contends with is sin—in its essentials, a diminution of the human person,” says the Council, “which prevents a man reaching his fullness of spirit” (Vatican II, Gaudium et spes, Point 13, December 7, 1965).

The spiritual man acts through the impulse of the Holy Spirit (Eph. 3:16) by practicing the virtues, and reaches his fullness of being with the help of the gifts of the same Holy Spirit, whose mission it is to perfect the supernatural life by means of the yet imperfect theological virtues. These gifts are found in every soul in grace.

Maturity, both human and supernatural, is not something we achieve instantaneously. It’s a task of each day, of many small successes gained by responding to grace in small things.

We have to assume the task of repeatedly practicing the virtues by concrete acts. By practicing the virtues with a care for detail we fashion a true character, a spirit submissive to the actions of the Holy Spirit, a will fixed on the things of God, and on the needs of others for God’s sake.

“Jesus grew” (Luke 2:40). He wanted our supernatural growth also to accompany our human growth to maturity. The natural virtues are the ground and foundation of the supernatural. One cannot conceive of a good Christian who is not at the same time a good parent, a good citizen, a good friend. One’s true human vocation is to be found somehow subsumed within one’s supernatural Christian vocation.

St. Josemaría says, “When a soul strives to cultivate the human virtues, the heart is already very close to God. The Christian sees that the theological virtues—faith, hope, and charity—and all the other things that bring with them the grace of God impel him never to be neglectful of the good qualities that he shares with so many other people” (J. Escrivá, Friends of God, Point 91).

Grace does not act obliquely on one’s nature, but on the interior reality—physical, psychological, moral—it lights upon. Normally, interior supernatural life acquires its fulfillment while its possessor is playing a fully human role. The love of God facilitates and strengthens the natural virtues.

The Second Vatican Council comments, “Human maturity shows itself above all in a certain stability of mind, in a capacity for making hard decisions, and in the right way of judging events and people” (Vatican II, Optatum totius, Point 11, October 28, 1965).

The adult person has a real and objective idea of himself, distinguishes his effective achievements from what is still only a desire or plan, and accepts his limitations.

These characteristics give him a feeling of security which enables him to act in a coherent, responsible and free way. He knows how to adapt himself to circumstances without rigid inflexibility or weakness, without yielding or insisting on his rights according to the letter of the law.

The immature person frequently deceives himself in his plans and projects because he does not know his own real capabilities; he lives insecurely, avoiding, by way of excuses, accepting his own responsibility, and does not easily recognize and admit his setbacks and mistakes.

If we come very close to Our Lady we will learn easily how to obey promptly, joyfully, and effectively.

St. Josemaría in Christ Is Passing By says, “Following her example of obedience to God, we can learn how to serve with refinement and without being slavish. In Mary we don’t find the slightest trace of the attitude of the foolish virgins, who obey, but thoughtlessly.

“Our Lady listens attentively to what God wants, ponders what she doesn’t fully understand, and asks about what she doesn’t know. Then she gives herself completely to doing the divine will: ‘Behold the handmaid of the Lord, be it done unto me according to your word’” (J. Escrivá, Christ Is Passing By, Point 173).

I thank you, my God, for the good resolutions, affections, and inspirations that you have communicated to me during this meditation. I ask your help to put them into practice. My Immaculate Mother, Saint Joseph, my father and lord, my guardian angel, intercede for me.

In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.

PKN