What the Saints Have to Say About - Obedience

Obedience is the only virtue that implants the other virtues in the heart and preserves them after they have been so implanted.

- St. Gregory I The Great

Obedience is the mortification of the members while the mind remains alive. Obedience is unquestioned movement, death freely accepted, a simple life, danger faced without worry, an unprepared defense before God, fearlessness before death, a safe voyage, a sleeper's journey. Obedience is the sepulcher of the will and the resurrection of lowliness.

- St. John Climacus

If you are ordered to eat meat, be extremely careful not to make the slightest resistance to obedience, for you will render more honor to God by eating flesh meat through obedience than by fasting on bread and water of your own volition.

- St. John Eudes

If you begin to grieve at this, to judge your superior, to murmur in your heart, even though you outwardly fulfill what is commanded, this is not the virtue of obedience, but a cloak over your malice.

- St. Bernard of Clairvaux

The virtue of obedience makes the will supple. It gives the power to conquer self, to overcome laziness, and to resist temptations. It inspires the courage with which to fulfill the most difficult tasks.

- St. John Vianney

Thus the abbot john without a single though as to whether it would do any good or not, with great and prolonged labor watered a dray stick for a whole year on end when told to do so. Heaven sometimes approved this kind of obedience with miracles.

- St. Ignatius of Loyola.

From The Wisdom of the Saints by Jill Haak Adels