Well, we’ve made the first three rungs and we’re
climbing towards the top of the ladder, but we have twenty seven more steps to
go. So onto rung number four we go. We all know what obedience is. We obey the
laws of our country, the rules of our parents, our school and other people placed
in authority over us. But what about the Christian response to obedience? How
are we supposed to act towards the people around us and especially towards our
spiritual father? I can assure you I love my spiritual father and am always
blessed by his presence. I have been trying to talk to him more and more every
day, although there are days when I just can’t for whatever reason. St. John of
the Ladder says about this, “Show God in spirit your faith in your spiritual
father and your sincere love for him. And God in unknown ways will suggest to
him that he may be attached to you and kindly disposed towards you, just as you
are well disposed towards him.” I am also convicted of the times I have failed
my own spiritual father, and St. John was the one who did it. He writes, “If
anyone receives voluntarily some task from his father, and in doing it suffers
a stumble, he should not ascribe the blame to the giver but to the receiver of
the weapon. For he took the weapon for battle against the enemy, but has turned
it against his own heart. But if he forced himself for the Lord’s sake to
accept the task, though he previously explained his weakness to him who gave
it, let him take courage; for though he has fallen, he is not dead.” Thus,
we have reached the point of this article. Obedience to those around us, and
obedience to God. Let us not falter in our way lest we stumble and fall back
down the ladder.
We have been called from being just mere
Christians to heart of the battle. We have been called to become warriors for
Christ. One of the priests that I have shared this blog with called it spiritual
warfare and I believe that I am in some way participating on the front lines of
the battlefield though maybe not in the role the clergy and monks do. St. John
says, “Our treatise now appropriately touches upon warriors1 and athletes of
Christ. As the flower precedes the fruit, so exiles either of body or will
always precedes obedience. For with the help of these two virtues, the holy
soul steadily ascends to heaven as upon golden wings. And perhaps it was about
this that he who had received the Holy Spirit sang: Who will give me wings like
a dove? And I will fly by activity, and be at rest by contemplation and
humility.” He continues by saying, “Obedience
is absolute renunciation of our own life, clearly expressed in our bodily
actions. Or, conversely, obedience is the mortification of the limbs while the
mind remains alive. Obedience is unquestioning movement, voluntary death,
simple life, carefree danger, spontaneous defence by God, fearlessness of
death, a safe voyage, a sleeper’s progress. Obedience is the tomb of the will
and the resurrection of humility. A corpse does not argue or reason as to what
is good or what seems to be bad. For he who has devoutly put the soul of the novice
to death will answer for everything. Obedience is an abandonment of discernment
in a wealth of discernment.” Obedience therefore is once again an exile, a
detachment from the world, a renunciation of the world. Through all of this we
see that obedience is the heart of the Christian. Without it we are nothing
than mere heretics and hypocrites. We live in a society today where the world
wants us to fulfill our own desires our own hearts. We live where people can
marry the person of the same gender, where men can dress as women and women as
men, we even live in a world that celebrates violence like it did at the Oscars
recently with Will Smith and Chris Rock. People are no longer submitting
themselves to authority whether it be to someone else or the self-control that
we must practice restraining ourselves from sin. We are told by St. John that, “He
who submits himself, passes sentence on himself. If his obedience for the
Lord’s sake is perfect, even if it does not seem perfect, he will escape
judgment. But if he does his own will in some things, then although he
considers himself obedient, he lays the burden on his own shoulders. It is good
if the superior does not give up reproving him; but if he is silent, then I do
not know what to say. Those who submit themselves in the Lord in simplicity run
the good race without provoking the bile of the demons against themselves by
their inquisitiveness.” In the same vein he says, “The beginning of the
mortification both of the soul’s desire and of the bodily members involves much
hard work. The middle sometimes means much hard work and is sometimes painless.
But the end is insensibility and insusceptibility to toil and pain. Only when
he sees himself doing his own will does this blessed living corpse feel sorry
and sick at heart; and he fears the responsibility of using his own judgment.
The Christian life is not easy. It is work. Only those who persevere to the end
can make it. That is the heart of the Ladder. The Ladder teaches us how to
persevere in the Christian life.
If we are truly to be Christian
we must be surrounded by God and his saints. In our thoughts, in our actions,
in our hearts and in our desires. Everything we do we must do out of Love for
one another and for the glory of God. Without it, we once again fall into heresy
and blaspheme the name of God, whom we serve. In doing so St. John says, “To
admire the labours of the saints is good; to emulate them wins salvation; but
to wish suddenly to imitate their life in every point is unreasonable and
impossible.” We have been given the witness of the saints, not because they
are some magical being that has achieved great success, nor do they take the
place of God in our lives. The saints however give us the Christian witness in
which we can serve God fully and obey his every command. I was once reminded by
a relative that the saints were mere sinners. Of course, they were! They had their
own faults and failures just as everyone else does. The difference between us
and them is that they perfected their faith through obedience and service to
God and we have still yet to achieve that. St. John reminds us of this because
he knows the men around him are all striving to attain the salvation of God. He
writes, “Blessed is he who, though maligned and disparaged every day,
masters himself for the Lord’s sake. He will join the chorus of martyrs and
boldly converse with the angels. Blessed is the monk who regards himself as
hourly deserving every dishonour and disparagement. Blessed is he who mortifies
his will to the end, and leaves the care of himself to his director in the
Lord; for he will be placed at the right hand of the Crucified. He who will not
accept a reproof, just or unjust, renounces his own salvation. But he who
accepts it with an effort, or even without an effort, will soon receive the
remission of his sin.”
Of course it would not be
a struggle to climb the ladder if we did not have the enemy trying to oust us
from the rungs of divine ascent. St. John says, “The devil battles with
those in obedience, sometimes to defile them with bodily pollutions and make
them hard-hearted, and sometimes to provoke more than usual restlessness. At
other times he makes them dry and barren, sluggish in prayer, drowsy and
confused by spiritual darkness, in order to tear them away from their struggle
by making them think they have gained nothing by their obedience but are only
backsliding. For he does not allow them time to reflect that often the
providential withdrawal of our imagined goods or blessings leads us to the
deepest humility.” St. John gives us courage though saying, “You will
not labour many years, son, in search of blessed inner peace, if in the
beginning you surrender yourself with all your soul to indignities.” There
will come times in our life when we will suffer I have repeated that many times
in many blogs. But remember dear brothers and sisters that it is not in vain.
We with the power of Jesus Christ will overcome. St. John once again says, “From
obedience comes humility, and from humility comes dispassion; for the Lord
remembered us in our humility and redeemed us from our enemies.2 Therefore
nothing prevents us from saying that from obedience comes dispassion, through
which the goal of humility is attained. For humility is the beginning of
dispassion, as Moses is the beginning of the Law; and the daughter perfects the
mother, as Mary perfects the Synagogue. St. John also says, “Let us keep
guard over ourselves with all care. For when a harbour is full of ships it is
easy for them to get crushed by each other, especially if they are secretly
riddled with bad temper as by some worm.”
There is much more I could
say about obedience, but I refrain from doing so because it would take some
time to discuss. Therefore I will end this here. But I do suggest you read this
chapter in full. A lot of good information is presented and God will help those
who fully understand it. St. John asks us here to keep running for we are athletes
for Christ. We are running the good race, and fighting the good fight. We must keep
going, we must keep climbing. We have many rungs to go. Let us pray that God
will bless our struggle and keep going.
Amen.
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