For the Work of Another

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Sharon who blogs at Clairity's Journal and who is a pal of Sister Edith, both teaching at the College of St Scholastica in Duluth is musing today on a different aspect of sociology: obedience. I just spent an evening with a nephew who I hadn't see for some time. He was in town with his two absolutely adorable daughters, 6 and 10. No shrinking violets they; just like their dad, real chatterboxes.

I was struck though by a comment he made with respect to "obedience" that was reminiscent of something I would have said 30 years ago when I was his age. He was pretty proud of how he was beginning to think for himself, especially in "church matters." We didn't have the opportunity to discuss the matter, but afterwards I was struck by the fact that it wasn't until I began to admit that I didn't know everything and began to submit myself to the the tenets of the Church that I really began to grow up.

Sharon has just returned from a circle trip around Lake Superior with her daughter. Check out her blog for some really great photographs that she took on that journey.

I'm reading a collection of texts from Fr. Giussani on the Fraternity, which is the permanent form of Communion and Liberation, actually a lay order. I ran across some very provocative pages about obedience. This obviously isn't easy in our culture. Not only is it tough to not follow my own will first, it's hard to even realize that that's what I instinctively do, all the time.

The terrible problem in the history of the Church is not Marxism or liberation theology--we can see this by their setbacks--but the alternative between the Gnosis and the fact of Christ. Either the criterion is I (or someone else) or the criterion is the Mystery of Christ that is perpetuated in the Church "autonomously" with the work of Peter. Conceiving of oneself in terms of the work of another: this is humility. Obedience is like humility; it is freedom from the world, freedom from enslavement.

This is Asceticism 101. We only need to read the worst-written hagiography to find that the truly fruitful part of a saint's life was obedience in contradictions. And daily life can be supremely contrary. Gnosis refers to those heresies that extolled the secret knowledge that belonged to the elite, those who truly "understand". There are lots of ways to be elite, conservative and liberal ways alike. It goes without saying that our own judgment about how to spend our time, our resources, whether to do this or to do that, is generally the court of last resort. And we have the whole script to explain how we came to our treasured conclusions. Obedience is something different. [snip] Read More