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Tuesday, January 29, 2013

Spirituality: Jesuit Obedience


In a letter to his Jesuit brothers, Ignatius writes the following:

It is in obedience more than in any other virtue that God our Lord gives me the desire to see you become outstanding, not only for the particular good to be found in it, as the Holy Scripture so praised with examples and words in the Old and the New Testaments, but because (as St. Gregory says) ... "Obedience is a virtue that by itself imprints in the soul all the other virtues, and once printed, it keeps them there." For as long as obedience blooms, all other virtues will also be seen to be blooming and bear the fruit that I wish for your souls, which is the same desired by Him. He redeemed, out of obedience, a world lost for lack of it.

(Letter on Obedience, in Antonio T. de Nicholas, Powers of Imagining Ignatius de Loyola, p. 303)

2 comments:

  1. If I had learned the beauty of obedience much
    earlier in life, I could have been spared a great
    deal of pain and disappointment. It is too bad that the young by definition have little wisdom.

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    Replies
    1. You learned a lot from that pain and disappointment. This is what obedience teaches. Everyone has to learn these valuable lessons. We learn from the choices we make and from the ones made for us.

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