by Boudreaux, Florentin, 1821-1894
But let this suffice to establish the value of obedience, its necessity for all those who aim at satisfying the claims of their Creator upon them and thus meriting His divine approval and His eternal recompense. Let it suffice also to give us an earnest desire to learn this most necessary virtue from the Sacred Heart of Jesus, the Heavenly Master into whose school we have entered to acquire the science of the saints. Let us then study the obedience of the Sacred Heart, since it has been pleased to give us examples of it and thus induce us to practise it with less difficulty. It is again the love of the Sacred Heart of Jesus for us which makes it obedient; it is His love which makes Him go before us that we may follow Him in a painful path. Like a tender mother, He takes the bitter draught first and smiles as He takes it, as if it were sweet to His palate, to encourage our weakness and overcome our repugnance. Like the eagle, He takes us on His wings and teaches us to soar aloft, far above the dark earth, into our native element, where the golden sunlight never sets and is never obscured. It is the same wise love which made Him meek and humble to repair the ruin caused by pride and cruel selfishness, which now makes Him obedient to restore the peace and harmony between us and our God, which disobedience and rebellion had destroyed. There was war between heaven and earth ; the gates were closed, and on the battlements of heaven there stood, day and night, in serene but awful anger, an army of angel soldiery, clad in the fiery mail of the divine indignation and armed with the flaming swords of God’s vengeance against sin. Generation after generation of the rebellious children of men passed upward from the gloomy earth, the souls, by an impulse of their spiritual essence, pressing aloft to mingle with the source from which they had sprung. But the golden portals remained closed against them; the serenely but awfully angry sentinels warned them away from that abode of spotless sanctity, and the flaming swords of God’s vengeance pursued their lingering flight to the prison-houses in which they were to be confined. On earth, mankind felt its wounds and was sensible of its fall. There was a faint glimmering of hope, that one day peace would be restored ; and all the spiritual nature of man, darkened though it was and earthbound by the weight of its guilt, was yet tinged with that faint ray and appeared to struggle upward against the burthen which oppressed it. In pagan rites as well as in the sacrifices offered to the true God, though fainter far in those than in these, we see traces of the endeavours of mankind, if not to pacify an injured Divinity, at least to keep alive the hope that a victim, more worthy than any which they could offer, would yet be found to effect their reconciliation with heaven.
Yet, the efforts were fruitless; the victims were not accepted ; God was unappeased ; mankind remained unredeemed. But in the centre of light, whence had proceeded that faint ray of hope which still lingered on earth ; in the bosom of the Eternal Father, there burned, with intensest glow, a compassionate love for the fallen race ; an almost impatient love, which seemed to long for the appointed moment when it might burst forth and envelop in its flames the long expected victim of expiation. And when that moment came at last, there went forth a voice from that burning centre, and its words sounded with a divinely sweet melody through the vaults of heaven: “ Sacrifice and oblation thou didst not desire: then I said: Behold I come. In the head of the book it is written of me that I should do thy will. O my God, I have desired it, and thy law in the midst of my heart. The peace-offerings of guilty man, his holocausts and his incense have been inadequate, and would forever continue to be inadequate, to satisfy for his rebellion. But as his fall was the effect of pride and disobedience, behold I come to repair it by my obedience. Thy will, which he despised, it shall be my first and my constant care to revere and fulfil : obedience to thy law shall reign in the midst of my Heart.” Yes, His Heart will be obedient for us; His Heart will teach us how to obey, and thus at once pay the forfeit of our rebellion and enable us to share in the fruits of His redemption. And indeed, what was His whole life on earth but an act of obedience ? Follow Him from the cradle to the tomb, and it is the path obedience that you have traced. What is the history of His three and thirty years in the gospel, but the obedient fulfilment in His person of whatever had been mirrored of Him in the law and the Prophets? That law, the expression of God’s will, was in His Heart, as though it were the life of His Heart, the soul of His entire being. It certainly was the guide of His actions, the lamp by whose light He walked. Whatever has been written of Him, He accomplishes to the letter. Every prophecy He fulfils; every type and figure He verifies in His own person. His path through life, from His first faint cry of helplessness at Bethlehem to his last breath on Calvary, leads through a long series of painful labours faithfully performed, of bitter persecutions patiently borne, of manifold sorrows meekly endured, in obedience to the decree of God ; until all the sacrifices have been accomplished, all the work assigned to Him completed, so that He may truly exclaim with that last breath of His : “ It is consummated ! ” What was written of Him at the head of the book, is written again on its every page, down to the very end. He has done Thy will, O God, and Thy law was at all times in the midst of His heart. Truly has He said : “ I do always the things that please him.” ( John x.) “ Yea, Father, for so hath it seemed good in thy sight.” (Matt, xi.) But this obedience to the law of His Eternal Father was not the only obedience which He practised for our sake; or rather, this view of His entire life as one long act of submission to the will of God, is not the only view in which we should consider it, so as to derive from His example the full benefit which may come to us from it. For surely no rational mind can refuse submission to However faithless we may be in practise, we can never deny the principle that God, as our Creator, is our Master; and as our Master, He has a necessary claim to our obedience. We are not generally so rash as openly to rebel against the authority of God and declare our entire independence of Him.