So saving are these attitudes felt to be that
in themselves, apart from utility, they become ideally consecrated; and
in obeying a man whose fallibility we see through thoroughly, we,
nevertheless, may feel much as we do when we resign our will to that of
infinite wisdom. Add self-despair and the passion of self-crucifixion
to this, and obedience becomes an ascetic sacrifice, agreeable quite
irrespective of whatever prudential uses it might have.

It is as a sacrifice, a mode of "mortification," that obedience is
primarily conceived by Catholic writers, a "sacrifice which man offers
to God, and of which he is himself both the priest and the victim. By
poverty he immolates his exterior possessions; by chastity he immolates
his body; by obedience he completes the sacrifice, and gives to God all
that he yet holds as his own, his two most precious goods, his
intellect and his will. The sacrifice is then complete and unreserved,
a genuine holocaust, for the entire victim is now consumed for the
honor of God."[186] Accordingly, in Catholic discipline, we obey our
superior not as mere man, but as the representative of Christ. Obeying
God in him by our intention, obedience is easy. But when the text-book
theologians marshal collectively all their reasons for recommending it,
the mixture sounds to our ears rather odd.

[186] Lejuene: Introduction a la Vie Mystique, 1899, p. 277. The
holocaust simile goes back at least as far as Ignatius Loyola.

"One of the great consolations of the monastic life," says a Jesuit
authority, "is the assurance we have that in obeying we can commit no
fault. The Superior may commit a fault in commanding you to do this
thing or that, but you are certain that you commit no fault so long as
you obey, because God will only ask you if you have duly performed what
orders you received, and if you can furnish a clear account in that
respect, you are absolved entirely. Whether the things you did were
opportune, or whether there were not something better that might have
been done, these are questions not asked of you, but rather of your
Superior. The moment what you did was done obediently, God wipes it
out of your account, and charges it to the Superior. So that Saint
Jerome well exclaimed, in celebrating the advantages of obedience, 'Oh,
sovereign liberty! Oh, holy and blessed security by which one become
almost impeccable!'

"Saint John Climachus is of the same sentiment when he calls obe