013 Obedience
Mar 10
Speaker 1: [00:00:01] You probably have a file somewhere in your teenage brain labeled obedience equals no dog eared underlined highlighted in neon obedience sounds like leashes and levers like God as a cosmic hall monitor with a ticket book. But what if obedience is not God's power move at all? What if it is? How love listens? Welcome to a Quiet Catechism. This is a Catholic podcast for slowing down and listening carefully. Taking one small word at a time and asking what's worth keeping. Today's word is obedience. Episode three in Our Virtues and Interior Life series. I'm Doug Tuke. I'm a writer. I'm an educator. I'm a podcaster. I'm a lifelong student of the Catholic tradition, which has this remarkable way of holding together reason and mystery, clarity and mercy, thought and love. Today, we're going to sit with that prickly little word, obedience, the one most of us hope the homilist skips, because when many of us hear it, we picture God with a clipboard, checking boxes, making notes, maybe frowning. We picture being smaller, quieter, less ourselves. But in the Catholic tradition, obedience is not God's power move. It's how love listens. It's how a human will small, stubborn, spectacularly confused, learns to lean toward the will of God and say, all right, if this is where you are, I will be here to. Saint Thomas Aquinas calls obedience a virtue that makes the will ready to follow God and those who truly represent him. Good line. He puts it under the virtue of justice, because obedience gives God what is owed not just admiration from afar, but a life that actually responds, not a brain shut off, not a personality erased, but choices aligned with the one who sees more of reality than we do.
Speaker 1: [00:02:41] So obedience at its heart is not about shrinking. It's about orienting, turning the will toward a someone who loves you more than you love yourself. The model, as usual in the Christian life, is Christ in the mystery of the Trinity. Theologians like Balthasar say the son is pure receiving and responding love, an eternal yes to the father that becomes visible in time. You see that? Yes, in Gethsemane their obedience goes through real human dread. Not my will, but yours be done. Prayed with a body that knows what nails feel like on the cross. Obedience looks like staying when every instinct screams to flee. This is where the word becomes dangerous and beautiful. Because Christians are not invited into some generic attitude of doing what we are told. We are invited into the very obedience of Jesus Himself poured into our hearts by grace. Pope Benedict XVI will speak of the interior life as participation in Christ's own relationship with the father, Nourished by the Eucharist and prayer. Obedience, then, is not a spiritual side hobby. It's how that relationship takes shape in your decisions. What I hear this tradition saying is this obedience is not something God demands from you so much as something Christ lives in you. Whenever you even try to say yes, however clumsily you are letting his yes echo just a little in your life. Now we have to be honest.
Speaker 1: [00:04:42] The word obedience has a criminal record. Many of us have seen it used like a crowbar. Families weaponizing. Honor your father and mother to excuse abuse. Church leaders confusing their own preferences with the voice of God. Communities were asking a hard question. Gets labeled rebellion. Psychologists who study religious life warn that when obedience is driven by fear or shame, people can comply without growing. And their conscience withers like a muscle never used. That is not what God is asking for. Authentic Christian obedience presupposes an awake conscience and real trust. It refuses to bypass your interior life. Spiritual writers tell us discernment, prayer, and honest self-knowledge are essential. Without them, what we call obedience can collapse into mere conformity, or even become a way to avoid the frightening work of choosing the good freely. So if obedience has been misused in your story, that matters. Your reluctance is not a lack of faith. It may be a sign of conscience trying to wake up. Real obedience will never ask you to turn that conscience off. Let's pause for a moment. So far, we've seen that obedience in the Catholic tradition is how love listens. It's a virtue that makes the will ready to follow God, not by shutting off your mind, but by aligning your choices with the one who sees more than you do. The model is Jesus, the son's eternal yes to the father, lived through Gethsemane, through dread, through the cross, all the way to staying when everything in him could have run. We are invited not into generic rule following, but into that obedience poured into our hearts by grace and nourished by prayer and the Eucharist.
Speaker 1: [00:06:51] And because the word has been misused, sometimes in harsh and harmful ways, authentic Christian obedience absolutely requires an awake conscience. Real trust and the hard work of discernment, not fear or shame. So obedience is not be smaller. It is God's quiet. Come closer. So what might obedience look like on an ordinary Tuesday afternoon without any halos or trumpets? Maybe it's staying faithful in a vocation that sometimes feels like exile. The marriage that's harder than you dreamed. The priesthood that's lonelier than you admit. The parenting that leaves you hollowed out by bedtime. Obedience. There is not pretending it's easy. It's doing the next act of love because Christ asked you to, not because your feelings finally lined up. Maybe obedience is refusing to let your disappointments with the church have the last word. You can name failures clearly. You can confront injustice. You can insist on truth. But obedience means you do not let the sin of the church annul the call of Christ. Let me say that again. Obedience means you do not let the sin of the church annul the call of Christ. You keep listening for his voice in Scripture, in the sacraments, in the quiet corner of your conscience, where he meets you. Maybe obedience is something as undramatic as confession. You sense you should go. Every cell resists. Obedience is putting your shoes on anyway. Here's the small redemptive secret. Every time you bend your will, however shakily, toward what you sincerely believe to be God's will, you are letting Christ's own obedience flicker in your life.
Speaker 1: [00:09:05] You are participating in miniature, in that eternal. Yes, he offers the father. Let's bring this down into your week. What does all this mean for your real life in the next few days. First, expect obedience to feel small and ordinary most of the time. You may feel nothing. You may suspect you're doing it badly. You probably are. But Grace is very gifted at working with badly. So one practice when the word obedience shows up, maybe in a Scripture passage, maybe in a request. You really don't like. Maybe in that nudge of conscience you wish would go away. Try to hear it not as be smaller, but as come closer. Second practice. Stop and breathe. Once. Literally. Then ask Jesus, what is your will for me in the next ten minutes? Not next year, not five year plan. Just the next ten minutes. Maybe the answer will be right. The email you're avoiding, but without the snark, maybe it will be. Close the laptop and sit on the floor with the kid who is asking for your attention. Maybe it will be. Do not argue this time. Listen, what I hear the text inviting us into is this. Over years of small, honest yeses, obedience slowly turns your life into a kind of listening, less tight fisted control of outcomes, more willingness to be led by someone who loves you more than you love yourself. And when. Not if you fail.
Speaker 1: [00:10:55] When you say no. When you choose comfort over courage. And then wince in the rear view mirror. Remember this. God's patience with that process is longer than your lifetime. The door back is always obedience in its simplest form. Lord, I was wrong. Show me the next right thing and give me the grace to do it. So this week, maybe obedience is just that prayer on your lips once a day. As we close, I want to leave you with this. This image of obedience. Not a leash, not a lever, not God with a ticket book, obedience as a quiet hand on your shoulder, guiding you toward the one place your most loved. When the word shows up today on a page of Scripture in a request you don't like, and that interior nudge. Hear it if you can. As an invitation. Not be smaller. Come closer. Stop. Breathe. Ask Jesus, what is your will for me in the next ten minutes? Then as best you can do that. And when you can't, when you don't, when you won't Come back with that simple prayer. Lord, I was wrong. Show me the next right thing and give me the grace to do it. May your will, small and stubborn and spectacularly confused, learn to lean just a bit more toward his will this week. And may you discover in that leaning that obedience is not about losing yourself, but about finding yourself in the one who loves you more than you love yourself. Go in peace and in small, honest yeses. Let's begin.
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