All vocations are a call
to be who we are—to discover ourselves in light of our
relationship as sons and daughters of the Father, who is
Love. Thus, one’s true freedom is to live the greatness
of this love which unites us to the heart of the Father
within the context of one’s specific vocation. Mother
Adela Galindo writes, “the identity of each human person
is found in their ability to love. The fundamental basis
of our human dignity lies in our being created in the
image and likeness of God [. . .] who “is” Love. So the
plenitude of the human person comes from our ability to
love…and to love like God loves. Our fulfillment comes
from our ability to love to this extreme.”[1]
Mother’s words teach us that both one’s identity and
fulfillment, the liberation of one’s heart, is found in
loving to the extreme.
In the consecrated
vocation, through the profession of the evangelical
counsels, one is conformed to Christ in a mysterious and
singular way by living the life that He chose while on
earth—as an offering of love to the Father for the sake
of the world, a life of love to the extreme. The
counsels become for the consecrated heart its path to
authentic freedom and liberation, lived in deep
communion with the heart of Christ. In a specific way,
the counsel of obedience immerses one into the true
freedom that a filial heart experiences before God, for
it aims to conform the consecrated heart to the great
abandonment, borne of love, which Christ bore towards
His Father. In order to understand and live this
supernatural vocation of love to the extreme, we must
turn to those hearts Who have paved this way for us—the
way of the New Covenant, the way of love—the hearts of
Jesus and Mary. Without them, we would neither have nor
understand the beauty and the great worth of a life
totally consecrated to God. For our Lord is
consecration Himself! His entire earthly life was
nothing but a constant “yes” to the Father and a
constant living of His identity as the Beloved Son of
the Father. Our Lord’s obedience unto death and
willingness to be totally emptied in order to fulfill
the Father’s will is the path that we desire to walk to
live in the perfect freedom that evangelical obedience
prescribes. Furthermore, Mary’s heart, like that of her
Son, is a consecrated heart. She is rightly considered
the “model of consecration”[2]
because she was, even before the Annunciation, totally
identified with her true identity: daughter of the
Father, dependent on Him and totally disposed to His
will. Thus, it is to the hearts of Jesus and Mary that
we must look to understand the meaning of evangelical
obedience and how it is the true freedom of the
consecrated heart.
Evangelical Obedience: A Specific
Acceptance of the Mystery of Christ
The profession of the
evangelical counsels of poverty, chastity, and obedience
in the consecrated life are the path to liberation of
the heart, for they are, as Servant of God John Paul II
writes, “a specific acceptance of the mystery of Christ,
lived within the Church.”[3]
Thus, in professing the counsels, one
ultimately gains everything, for one gains Christ and
His love in the richness of the life that He Himself
embraced on earth. Furthermore, as the Vatican II
document Perfectae Caritatis teaches, the
counsels are undertaken “in pursuit of perfect charity,”[4]
the path which, as Mother Adela says, is
the only true freedom of the human heart. In his many
addresses to and meditations on the consecrated life,
John Paul II testifies to the redeeming and liberating
power of the counsels. Instead of being an
“impoverishing renunciation” they are “a choice that
frees a person for a fuller realization of his
potential”[5],
“the most radical means for transforming [. . .] the
human heart.”[6]
In a particular way, the counsel of obedience lies at
the heart of the Lord’s redemptive and transformative
plan for the consecrated life, for it most clearly
reaches “the deep essence of the entire economy of the
redemption.”[7]
How is this so? In Romans 5:19 St. Paul teaches that
Christ’s obedience brought righteousness and life to
all. Therefore, in evangelical obedience, one enters
into this mystery of Christ’s life and finds oneself
situated, as it were, between the reality of sinful
human nature, with all of its tendencies to “dominate
rather than serve”, and the mystery of justification and
sanctifying grace.[8]
It is in this place, and along this path, that
evangelical obedience embraces the mystery of Christ’s
obedience and the consecrated heart, its own path to
sanctification.
As a result, evangelical
obedience has deep implications in the formation of
consecrated hearts. Since the counsels derive from the
love of the Father, John Paul II teaches that religious
profession “embraces the world and everything in it that
comes from the Father, and [. . .] at the same time
tends to overcome in the world everything that ‘does not
come from the Father.”[9]
When he refers to all of that which does not come from
the Father, what more does this mean than sin and the
works of the flesh, which arise from our human nature
wounded by original sin? The evangelical counsels
encounter their greatest resistance from the deepest
roots of concupiscence in the human heart, the threefold
lust of which St. John speaks: the lust of the eyes, the
lust of the flesh, and the pride of life.[10]
As John Paul II teaches, the profession of poverty,
chastity, and obedience, respectively, tends to conquer
this threefold lust. Of the three, the pride of life is
the element of concupiscence which bears most directly
upon the counsel of obedience. Likewise, it is precisely
this counsel which conquers everything in the human
heart that arises from the pride of life.[11]
In addition to the weight of our human nature wounded by
original sin, modern society’s emphasis on the autonomy
of the person, which can easily lead to a disordered
independence from God and others,[12]
further strengthens the will in disinclination to
docility and submission of one’s will before others.
Consequently, souls that embrace the consecrated life
embrace a deep and arduous road of formation and ongoing
conversion so that evangelical obedience—and indeed, all
of the counsels—may be lived in fullness. Since
evangelical obedience derives from Christ’s obedience
“unto death,” it is therefore an embrace of Christ’s
love for the Father—the love that led Him, in total
freedom, to His death for the salvation of the world.
Through evangelical obedience, then, the consecrated
heart embarks upon a path of continual identification
with Jesus’ attitude towards His Father—that of filial,
loving obedience to His will.[13]
The Heart of Christ:
Heart of Love, Heart of Obedience
As Christians, the way in
which Christ lived in relation to the Father becomes the
reference point and measure of true love and
responsibility towards Him. Thus, Christ’s obedience is
by no means an optional reality, something which one can
diminish or simply neglect. Christ’s obedience is the
foundation, the “constitution” of the Kingdom of God![14]
It is inextricably part of the New Covenant, the
Covenant of love. For this reason, by nature of his
vocation, the Christian is an obedient being.[15]
Christian obedience “[is] completely understood only
within the logic of love, intimacy with God and the
definitive belonging to the One who [. . .] sets all
free.”[16]
The heart of Jesus shows that love can never be
separated from obedience, for love leads to obedience,
just as obedience strengthens and proves love. He makes
this very clear when He says to His disciples, “If you
keep my commandments, you will remain in my love, just
as I have kept my Father’s commandments and remain in
his love.”[17]
To this, He immediately adds that He says this in order
that our joy may be complete—not that we may be
suppressed or stifled, but rather, liberated! The
Congregation for Institutes of Consecrated Life and for
Societies of Apostolic Life affirms the inseparability
of love and obedience in Jesus’ heart as it writes, “The
unquestionable primacy of love in the Christian life
cannot make us forget that such love has acquired a face
and a name in Christ Jesus and has become Obedience.”[18]
The Son became man to reveal the inner life of love of
the Trinity, the mystery of love which lies at the heart
of creation. He became flesh to reveal to us who we
truly are, to teach us love, and consequently, to teach
us everything that has to do with a life of love for God
and man—which includes, in a fundamental way, obedience.
Since Christ, the revelation of the love of God, was
obedient, obedience is nothing less than a response to
love. It is the key to one’s freedom and fulfillment,
which is found to the degree that God’s perfect will is
embraced.
From the very beginning
of His earthly life, Jesus understood, embraced and
responsibly guarded His mission from the Father. The
Gospel of John, in a particular way, is a testament to
this supreme love of Jesus for the Father. In
practically every chapter—in His discourses, in His
responses to the Jews, in His teachings to His
disciples—He constantly makes reference to the Father.
The Father’s will is His purpose for being born[19];
the Father is the origin and end of all of His works[20];
the Father’s will is His food.[21]
It was only in the Father that He found His identity,
and it was only in His will that He found His freedom.
One of the most striking realities about Jesus’
dependence on the Father is that the perfect union of
Their wills testifies to the perfect union of Their
hearts. This can be seen very clearly when, before
parting for the Garden of Gethsemane after the Last
Supper, Jesus says to His disciples, “the world must
know that I love the Father and that I do just as the
Father has commanded me.”[22]
At the time, the disciples might not have realized the
depth of these words; after the Resurrection, however,
they acquired an entirely new meaning as the
disciples—and indeed, all Christians—could see: His love
was so deep that it was not willing to spare anything;
it would not settle with anything but the fullness of
the Father’s will, even to the point of such an
agonizing death. Love sustained Him throughout His
entire earthly life, and it was love that led Him to the
Cross.
John Paul II teaches that
Jesus’ obedience to the Father’s will was marked by a
deep sense of responsibility and mutual trust.[23]
These were the practical realities which compelled Him
in His daily decisions and actions. Jesus’ life reveals
that the filial love which lies at the heart of
evangelical obedience is strengthened and lived out by
the very human virtues of responsibility—to the mission
entrusted to Him by the Father—and trust—in the
perfection of the Father’s plan. His life reveals that
only one who recognizes himself as beloved son or
daughter of the Father can place his entire will in His
hands, in total freedom, trusting that the Father’s will
is more perfect than his own.[24]
It is clear then that obedience is not a passive,
submissive reality that denies and diminishes one’s
personal existence—it is an active, responsible choice
of love! It is a choice which draws one deeper into the
truth of his identity and existence: as a beloved child
of the Father, created in His image and likeness. John
Paul II writes,
“the Son's attitude
discloses the mystery of human freedom as the path of
obedience to the Father's will, and the mystery of
obedience as the path to the gradual conquest of true
freedom [. . .] by obedience [consecrated hearts] intend
to show their awareness of being children of the Father
[. . . and to] show that they are growing in the full
truth about themselves, remaining in touch with the
source of their existence.”[25]
In light of these words,
it must be said that this attitude of the Son towards
the Father is not something automatically appropriated
by those who desire to live it; it is a high and lofty
reality, a mystery, like John Paul II says. Therefore,
the consecrated heart who chooses to embark upon the
path of evangelical obedience embraces a life of
continual identification with the heart and life of
Christ in order to put on His mind and appropriate the
movements of His heart as one’s own. Although we are in
the image of God by the very fact of our existence, it
is only through obedience that we are like to Him—that
is, “through our free choice, [we] become what he is by
nature:”[26]
obedient. This conformation does not take place simply
by one’s willing it, however. It is only in one’s
willingness to be totally emptied of oneself and docile
to God’s grace that He can give one a new heart and
conform one most perfectly to the obedience of Christ.
“He Emptied Himself”: The
Mystery of Poverty in Evangelical Obedience
Since each of the
evangelical counsels is an expression and manifestation
of one’s love for God, it is linked with the other two
and cannot be considered independently of them. In a
particular way, however, obedience and poverty are
closely interconnected. Without poverty of heart, a true
emptying of self, there would be no space for authentic
obedience in a consecrated heart. Poverty, therefore,
can be considered as the forerunner to obedience as
regards the necessary emptying of self required for the
living of this vow. Hans Urs Von Balthasar says that “It
would be folly to try to clear a path to evangelical
obedience without passing through this entrance gate [of
evangelical poverty].”[27]
It is not merely the living of evangelical poverty which
allows one to live evangelical obedience, however; the
self-emptying and poverty of spirit which evangelical
poverty entail prepare the consecrated heart for a
deeper and more radical self-emptying: that of death to
one’s will, one’s intellect, and one’s understanding.
This specific element of poverty within obedience
itself is what we wish to understand.
In the hymn from
Philippians 2,[28]
it is clear that evangelical poverty and obedience were
inseparable in the heart and life of Christ. Although
self-emptying is characteristic of both poverty and
obedience, obedience lives this self-emptying in a more
radical way: that of obedience “unto death”, humbling
oneself and becoming a slave as Christ did. Fr. Raniero
Cantalamessa describes the basis of Christ’s obedience
not as a principle or an idea, but as an event—that of
His death on the cross. Furthermore, as the New Adam,
the obedient One, His obedience consists principally in
emptying Himself and giving up His own will.[29]
For the consecrated heart, this sacrifice and
self-emptying is the very essence and direction of
evangelical obedience, which is rooted in love,
sustained by responsibility and trust, and invigorated
by a spirit of sacrifice and renunciation. To do the
Father’s will, Jesus shows that one must be empty of
one’s own will, the roots of which run very deep within
the human heart. When one chooses to live evangelical
obedience, one embraces the path, as John Paul II said,
that gradually leads to authentic freedom. One embraces
the life of learning to use one’s free will, freely and
joyfully, for the fulfillment of the Father’s will.
Part of the mystery of
the profession of the counsels, as was stated earlier,
is that they penetrate the heart of the Redemption: the
Paschal Mystery of Christ’s suffering, death, and
resurrection. All Christians are called to reproduce
within themselves this mystery of Christ’s life. In a
particular way, the Servant of God John Paul II teaches
that the “paschal duality” of Christ—that of death
through self-emptying and birth to new life through the
resurrection—is central in the profession of the
evangelical counsels. This entails putting to death
within oneself all that is sinful and embracing the
possibility of being reborn each day to a greater good
within the human heart.[30]
Furthermore, in response to the spousal
and redemptive love of Christ, the consecrated heart
desires to make Christ’s Paschal Mystery totally his own
by filling his soul and body with the spirit of
sacrifice.[31]
This spirit of sacrifice does not just embrace the large
crosses which come in religious life, but rather, all of
the daily offerings and sacrifices which the consecrated
heart makes in order to deny himself that he may be
conformed more fully to Christ. As regards evangelical
obedience, the spirit of sacrifice is directed primarily
towards emptying oneself of oneself, of even that
which is good, in order to be totally free to do God’s
will.
Perhaps there is no
greater teaching on the self-emptying, sacrifice, and
conformity to the life of Christ in the Christian
disciple than that of St. Paul in Philippians 3:7-14.
His words are perfectly applicable to the mystery of
evangelical obedience and can be understood as a
synthesis of its theology. St. Paul personally testifies
to his own experience of “counting as loss” all of his
merits, his glory, his identity before he knew Christ.
All of his old self is nothing—as he says, is
“rubbish”—when compared with the supreme good of knowing
Christ. Therefore, it is with great zeal that he desires
to lose all of these things for one purpose alone: to
gain Christ and be found in Him. This is precisely the
path of renunciation and self-emptying that evangelical
obedience entails. The supreme good and goal of this
counsel is to enter into this mystery of Christ and thus
gain Him in greater depth. Clearly, this sacrifice is
borne of love, for one cannot renounce even that which
is good with such willingness and freedom if not
impelled by the love of God. However, this can be seen
as the starting point for the path of evangelical
obedience.
He then goes on to say
that the purpose of all of this is to “know him and the
power of his resurrection and the fellowship of his
sufferings, being conformed to his death, in order that
I may attain to the resurrection from the dead.” This is
the Paschal Mystery which the consecrated heart is
called to make its own. It is to know Christ in all
things: in the glory of the resurrection, in the depth
of His suffering, and in the darkness of His death. The
Second Vatican Council reminds us that Christ’s
obedience was learned in the school of suffering,[32]
the school of sacrifice. For those who follow the path
of evangelical obedience, there is no other way than
through suffering, through the Cross, and through
renunciation to self. As St. Paul finishes, he makes it
clear that self-emptying is a continual process: “I do
not regard myself as having laid hold of [perfection]
yet; but one thing I do: forgetting what lies behind and
striving forward to what lies ahead, I press on toward
the goal for the prize of the upward call of God in
Christ Jesus.” The one thing that matters, Paul
preaches, is one’s determination to leave behind all
riches and attachments and constantly strive forward in
Christ to the fullness of His call to holiness. For the
consecrated heart as regards evangelical obedience, this
path to holiness is the perfection of the Father’s will,
which entails the embrace of self-emptying.
Obedience from the Heart:
The Spirit of the Counsel
Obedience, properly
understood as a response of love borne from the heart of
Christ, can only be applied to evangelical obedience on
the level of the heart, the true spirit of the counsel
of obedience. What does this mean? Mother Adela Galindo
writes, “The great risk for the religious is the
‘apparent’ [. . .] or ‘mediocre’ offering of the will
and the mind. Many times one may appear to be obedient
since one does what [one] is asked to do. Nonetheless,
the greatness of obedience is not only in the action,
but in acquiring the authentic spirit, the vision that
should move the actions.”[33]
As Mother writes, acquiring the authentic spirit is what
the embrace of the consecrated life entails. By virtue
of human nature wounded by original sin, one is not
naturally inclined to obedience borne of pure love,
moved without any selfish calculations, desires,
manipulations, or grumblings. The spirit itself—love—is
beyond one’s ability to grasp, for to love as Christ
loves—with His love—one must receive His love
poured forth in his heart through the power of the Holy
Spirit. However, as St. Paul teaches in Philippians 3,
one is able to eagerly strive forward, renounce
oneself, and forget all that lies behind in order to
make the necessary space within for Christ to reign in
fullness.
This is the great beauty
of the Church’s teaching on religious profession: that
it is a deepening and a perfection of one’s baptismal
consecration into Christ’s death.[34]
Anyone wishing to embrace the way of the counsels
embraces the understanding that religious profession is
a threefold holocaust of one’s entire being: soul, mind,
and body. This spirit of emptiness to self equips one
with receptivity to the power of the transforming love
of God which only the Holy Spirit can pour forth.
Through religious profession, then, one chooses the life
of the Spirit, moved by His power to live poor in
spirit—conformed to Christ’s death—in order that the
life of Christ may be “manifested through [one’s] body.”[35]
Pope Paul VI captures this spirit so well
when he writes in his Apostolic Exhortation on the
Renewal of the Religious Life, Evangelica
Testificatio, “You must feel something of the force
with which Christ was drawn to His Cross—that baptism He
had still to receive, by which that fire would be
lighted which sets you too ablaze [. . .] Let the Cross
be for you, as it was for Christ, proof of the greatest
love.”[36]
The baptism here—of which Christ spoke and to which Pope
Paul VI refers—is His death. Therefore, inflamed by His
death, one embraces it within oneself allows his heart
to receive all of the power of the Spirit and the
freedom that reigns where the Spirit of the Lord is.[37]
In the religious life,
the call to die is lived within the context of the
community, one’s spiritual family. It is in acquiring
one mind and heart that the consecrated heart embraces
the cross and denies himself of his will, preferences,
and way of interpreting and understanding. However, this
does not mean that one’s individuality, one’s personal
“I” ceases to exist. This contradicts the very reality
of the consecrated life and must be distinguished as an
element that is not in accordance with the true spirit
of evangelical obedience. As Mother Adela explains,
“In community, one way we
express our leaving behind [everything for Jesus] is
that we have to all become one [. . .] We don’t
annihilate our “I” [. . .] we need our “I” so we can
invest it in our “we”. It actually becomes a greater
“I.” It’s a wrong mentality to say that your “I” doesn’t
exist […]; it’s just [that] the direction of your “I” is
[no longer] for you. Your personal “I” is invested, is
given, given, not annihilated [. . .] there’s two
different movements. It’s given for the “we.”[38]
Is this not the reality
of the Church—Christ’s Bride and His Mystical Body, who
receives her identity from and in Him? Is this not the
reality of the consecrated life? If one is to put on
Christ, to be conformed to Him in an ever closer way
through the profession of the evangelical counsels, is
one not called to become all that He is, and therefore
renounce to oneself as being the author of his own will
and person? As Mother explains, one can never lose one’s
individuality. However, one invests the total gift of
oneself in the community so that, through the community,
the Lord may conform the soul to His image and likeness
through the profession of the counsels. The reality of
becoming one lies at the heart of evangelical obedience,
and in a particular way, at the heart of that specific
poverty so intrinsic to the living of authentic
obedience. Thus, it lies at the very heart of the
Gospel. When Christ states the demands of discipleship,
“If anyone wishes to come after me he must deny himself,
take up his cross, and follow me. For whoever wishes to
save his life will lose it, but whoever loses his life
for my sake will find it,”[39]
is this not precisely what He means? If one is to follow
Christ, one cannot be the author of one’s own identity,
life, and will. Only by denying oneself as such does the
consecrated heart make the necessary space within for
the path of the evangelical counsels to be walked freely
and fully. In religious life, therefore, the denial of
one’s very self is the total, willing, and joyful
dedication to becoming one with one’s religious family
by embracing the mind, heart, and identity of its
charism, which is a gift of the Spirit leading to
configuration to the heart of Christ for all of its
members.
Mary, “Living Icon of
Obedience”[40]
One cannot consider the
spirit of evangelical obedience without turning to Mary,
the Mother of God, she who is rightly understood as the
first and greatest disciple of the Lord. She is also the
“perfect model of consecration,”[41]
for she learned from and lived with He who is
Consecration Himself. As the Tradition of the Church
teaches us, Mary, from the beginning, was the obedient
remedy to Eve’s disobedience.[42]
Her total surrender to God and obedience to His word at
the Annunciation shows us that her heart was already
disposed to free and perfect obedience, borne of love
for God, even before Jesus was born. When He was born,
however, this obedience reaches an entirely new
dimension when it becomes obedience in the footsteps of
her Son, the Obedient One. Not only was she the first to
walk the path of the counsels that Christ marks out for
His disciples, she walked it to the greatest degree
possible. Although there is much that can be said about
Mary as the model of obedience, we will look primarily
at the spirit of total self-gift and total self-emptying
which made Mary’s obedience the most perfect model for
all consecrated hearts to follow.
As the first heart
consecrated to God in poverty, chastity, and obedience,
Mary is the most shining realization of how the
consecrated life particularly reveals the Church as
Bride. The Servant of God John Paul II writes, “The
consecrated life has always been seen primarily in terms
of Mary, Virgin and Bride [. . .] Following in the
footsteps of Mary, the New Eve, consecrated persons
express their spiritual fruitfulness by becoming
receptive to the Word.”[43]
This element is of utmost importance in
the spirit of evangelical obedience, which derives from
one’s love of God lived in total self-gift to Him. This
is precisely the source of Mary’s spiritual fecundity.
In the Gospel of Luke, when a woman from the crowd
praises her, Jesus qualifies this blessing and says,
“blessed rather are those who hear the word of God and
keep it.”[44]
Jesus’ words in no way detract from the sublime dignity
of Mary; rather, they elevate it. Mary’s perfect
availability and response to Him—the Word of God made
flesh—is the basis of discipleship! For anyone,
as Jesus says, who does so is His father, mother sister,
or brother—each is who he is called to be. The
consecrated heart, therefore, in the footsteps of Mary,
is who it is called to be by virtue of total self-gift
to the Lord: the offering of the totality of one’s
person: will, intellect, gifts, and potentialities. As
John Paul II teaches, maternal love and the love proper
to virginity are fused in Mary.[45]
Thus, her love for Jesus not only brought Him into the
world and nourished Him; it led her to freely and
completely give herself to His person, identity, and
mission and to walk the path that He marked for all
consecrated hearts. Her love for Jesus was always both
maternal and proper to virginity, the total gift of all
that she was to Him. This total self-gift filled the
heart of Mary and led her in freedom along her Son’s
path of obedience.
The mystery of the
Annunciation is a foundational event to consider as one
ponders the depth of Mary’s total self-gift to God. In a
particular way in this mystery, her total self-emptying
in order to receive and fulfill the will of the Father
in its fullness shines forth. Just as Christ emptied
Himself in order to fulfill the Father’s will, so too
Mary gives all of her “human and feminine I” to the Lord
in order that what He desires may be accomplished in and
through her.[46]
Her obedience, just like that of her Son, is completely
connected with the freedom of heart to empty herself of
her own will in order that the will of the Father may
become her will. At the moment of the Annunciation, our
Lady’s understanding of her identity can be seen to
expand in its depth when she responds to the angel:
“behold the handmaid of the Lord.” Before she
gives her decisive fiat, these words reveal that she
considers herself to be only that which the Lord wants
her to be. She is His servant, nothing more; she lives
to be who He desires her to be. In saying this, she does
not deny her “personal I” as Mary of Nazareth, but
rather, she gives it to the Lord and allows it to be
transformed and expanded into an ever more sublime
identity: that of the Mother of God. Her entire life,
her “pilgrimage of faith” was a constant deepening of
her understanding of herself as much more than Mary of
Nazareth, but that of the “handmaid of the Lord”—totally
the Lord’s, totally free to be who He wanted her to be:
Mother of the Church, the Immaculate Conception, and the
Mediatrix of all graces, to name a few. What greater
example of self-emptying and freedom of heart could
there be than this? What greater promise of the
perfection of the Lord’s will, and the perfection of the
human response before it? The Annunciation reveals that
a heart totally given to the Lord as an offering is
always an obedient heart. Furthermore, as an obedient
heart, it is a heart which is always disposed to be
empty of oneself in order that the fullness of God may
reign in the human heart—that one may “gain Christ and
be found in Him.”
Far from submission and
lack of personal freedom, Mary’s heart displays the
fullness of human freedom: that of perfect union with
the will of God. As a human heart, Mary lived as do we
all: by the light of faith. Therefore, the perfection of
her obedience is seen precisely in that she lived by
faith. As John Paul II teaches, to believe means “’to
abandon oneself’ to the truth of the word of the living
God.”[47]
Mary shows us that faith is only authentic if it
fulfills this definition set forth by John Paul II. In
fact, Mary does more than just show us authentic faith;
her faith inaugurates the New Covenant[48]
of love and obedience. She sets the
standard of faith for those who belong to the New
Covenant: faith is indispensably linked to total
abandonment to God; therefore, faith is indispensably
linked to obedience. This is what the Church, drawing
from the teaching of St. Paul in Romans 1:5, describes
as the obedience of faith. The Catechism of the Catholic
Church teaches, “To obey
in faith is
to submit freely to the word that has been heard,
because its truth is guaranteed by God, who is Truth
itself.”[49]
The Catechism makes it
clear that the obedience of faith is a completely free
act of the human intellect and will before God. Thus,
Mary, who “perfectly embodies the obedience of faith”[50]
is a totally free human person. Her choices of loving
obedience to God strengthened her freedom and faith
throughout her life, to the point of her willing consent
to Jesus’ death on the Cross.
It is at Calvary that her
obedience of faith reaches its pinnacle. John Paul II
describes Mary’s faith at the cross as the “deepest
kenosis of faith” in history, for it was precisely
through her faith that she was perfectly united to
Jesus’ self-emptying.[51]
Mary’s deepest personal will was that of
her incomparable love for her Son, a love that would
have wanted anything but His death. However, knowing it
was the Father’s perfect will, she not only consented to
it—she positively willed what the Father willed. This
required that she empty of herself of her deepest
will—her love of her Son—and in faith, positively unite
her will with the Father. Fr. William Most explains that
the deepest kenosis of faith in history was that of Mary
positively willing what the Father willed.[52]
The greatest obedience of faith is linked
with the greatest self-emptying in the heart of Mary.
Only faith, sustained by love, can lead the consecrated
heart to total self-emptying; only total self-emptying
allows obedience to be a free act of the human heart.
The hearts of Jesus and Mary reveal the depth and the
power of love to sustain and guide all hearts to the
perfection of evangelical obedience in submission to the
will of the Father.
Evangelical Obedience:
Abandonment to the Father’s Heart
The school in which the
consecrated heart learns, lives, and is purified along
the path of evangelical obedience is within the
religious community, its spiritual family. Under the
authority of his or her superior, whose authority, like
all authority, is given by God, the consecrated heart
learns how to recognize in him the sign of God’s
presence and mediation of His will.[53]
This is no easy task, for one finds oneself situated in
a “struggle between that I who tends to be in control of
oneself and one's history and that God who is ‘the Lord’
of every history, a school wherein one learns to entrust
oneself so much to God and to his Fatherhood, as also to
trust in men and women.”[54]
Evangelical obedience lived in the
context of religious life is an even greater abandonment
before God, for one must learn, in faith, to look beyond
the mere appearance of what is seen—another human
being—and instead, see the hand of God who communicates
His will through both the Cross and the consolations of
life. Thus, it is with great abandonment that the
consecrated heart embraces the path of evangelical
obedience. The hearts of Jesus and Mary are for all
consecrated hearts the examples of perfect abandonment
—and thus, perfect obedience—to the Father. Through and
in them, the consecrated heart is led through the
pathways of self-emptying, self-offering, and self-gift
in order that the Father’s will may truly become its
food—its only will. In this path of conversion and
conformation more fully with the true spirit of
evangelical obedience, the consecrated heart is
liberated to live its authentic freedom as it becomes
who it is called to be: a true son or daughter of the
Father, “obedient from the heart.”[55]
Works Cited
Cantalamessa, Raniero.
Obedience: The Authority of the Word. Boston: St.
Paul Publications, 1989.
Catechism of the Catholic
Church. New York: Doubleday, 1992.
Congregation for
Institutes of Consecrated Life and for Societies of
Apostolic Life. The Service of Authority and
Obedience. May 11, 2008.
Pitts, Mary Dominic. “The
Threefold Response to the Vows.” In The Foundations
of Religious Life: Revisiting the Vision, 100-111.
Notre Dame: Ave Maria Press, 2009.
John Paul II. Apostolic
Exhortation: Redemptionis Donum. March 25, 1984.
John Paul II. Apostolic
Exhortation: Vita Consecrata. March 25, 1996.
John Paul II. Encyclical
Letter: Redemptoris Mater. March 25, 1987.
John Paul II. Homily
for the Jubilee of Consecrated Life. February 2,
2000.
Most, William G. “A Papal
First.” Homiletic and Pastoral Review (1991).
Mother Adela Galindo.
The Charism of Love to the Extreme. August 9, 2004.
Mother Adela Galindo.
May We Have One Mind and Heart. April 1993.
Mother Adela Galindo.
Address on the Vision of the Music Ministry. October 15,
2009.
The New American Bible.
Vatican II Council.
Perfectae Caritatis. Rome: Vatican, 1965
[1]
Mother Adela Galindo, “The Charism of Love to
the Extreme.”
[2]
John Paul II, Vita
Consecrata, 28.
[4]
Perfectae Caritatis, 1.
[5]
John Paul II, “Homily for the Jubilee of
Consecrated Life.”
[6]
John Paul II, Redemptionis Donum, 9.
[8]
John Paul II, Redemptionis Donum, 13.
[9]
John Paul II, Redemptionis Donum, 9.
[11]
John Paul II, Redemptionis Donum, 9.
[12]
The Service of Authority and Obedience, 2.
[13]
John Paul II, Vita Consecrata, 36.
[14]
Raniero Cantalamessa, Obedience, (Boston,
St. Paul Publications, 1989), 16.
[16]
The Service of Authority and Obedience,
6.
[18]
The Service of Authority and Obedience,
8.
[19]
John 6:38; “I have come down from heaven not to
do my own will, but the will of Him who sent me”
[20]
John 8:28; “I do nothing on my own, but I speak
these things as the Father taught me”
[23]
John Paul II, Vita Consecrata, 21.
[24]
The Service of Authority and Obedience,
5.
[25]
John Paul II, Vita
Consecrata, 91.
[26]
Raniero Cantalamessa, Obedience, 24.
[27]
Hans Urs von Balthasar, The Christian State
of Life, (San Francisco: Ignatius Press,
1983), 154, quoted in Mary Dominic Pitts, The
Threefold Response of the Vows, in The
Foundations of Religious Life: Revisiting the
Vision, (Notre Dame: Ave Maria Press, 2009),
100.
[29]
Raniero Cantalamessa, Obedience, 15, 17.
[30]
John Paul II, Redemptionis Donum, 10.
[32]
Perfectae Caritatis, 14.
[33]
Mother Adela Galindo, “May We Have One Mind and
One Heart.”
[34]
John Paul II, Redemptionis Donum, 7.
[36]
Pope Paul VI, Evangelica Testificatio,
29, quoted in Mary Dominic Pitts, The
Threefold Response of the Vows, in The
Foundations of Religious Life, 104.
[38]
Mother Adela Galindo, Address on the Vision of
the Music Ministry, October 15, 2009.
[40]
Raniero Cantalamessa, Obedience, 69.
[41]
John Paul II, Redemptionis Donum, 17.
[42]
John Paul II, Redemptoris Mater, 19.
[43]
John Paul II, Vita Consecrata, 34.
[45]
John Paul II, Redemptoris Mater, 39.
[46]
John Paul II, Redemptoris Mater, 13.
[50]
Catechism of the Catholic Church, 148.
[51]
John Paul II, Redemptoris Mater, 18.
[52]
William G. Most, “A Papal First,” Homiletic
and Pastoral Review (1991).
[53]
The Service of Authority and Obedience,
29.
