“It is certain that he who lives in the Congregation of the Most Holy Redeemer without any will of his own, is able to say and to hope, that whatever he does, whether he studies, or prays, or hears confessions, or goes to the refectory, or to recreation, or to bed, he is pleasing Almighty God. For in the Congregation there is not a step or a movement which does not spring from obedience either to the rules or to the Superiors.

“The world does not understand, and even certain pious persons do not understand, the value of a life of obedience in a community. It is true that outside of religious communities many are to be found who work very hard, and perhaps harder than those who are living under obedience; they preach, they practice mortification, they pray and fast; but in all this, a great part, perhaps the greater part, of what they do, is done to please their own will. God grant that on the day of judgment they may not have to weep as those mentioned in Holy Scripture: Quare ieiunavimus, et non aspexisti? humiliavimus animas nostras, et nescisti? Ecce in die ieiunii vestri invenitur voluntas vestra (Is. lviii. 3). Upon which words St. Bernard remarks: Grande malum propria voluntas, qua fit, ut bona tua tibi bona non sint. On the contrary, he who does everything by obedience is sure of always pleasing God.

“The Venerable Mother Mary of Jesus said that she valued exceedingly her religious vocation for two reasons: the first, because in the convent she enjoyed continually the presence and company of Jesus in the Blessed Sacrament; the second, because in the religious life she belonged wholly to God, by sacrificing to Him, by means of obedience, her own will.

“Father Rodriguez relates that after the death of St. Dositheus, the disciple of St. Dorotheus, the Lord revealed that St. Dositheus, during the five years he had lived under obedience, notwithstanding that his ill-health had not allowed him to practice the same austerities as the other monks, had, nevertheless, by the practice of obedience, merited the same reward as St. Paul the Hermit and the Abbot St. Anthony.”

From The True Redemptorist by St. Alphonsus Maria de’Liguori.

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