For members of religious orders, obedience is “an act of love” and a powerful witness to the world of how gestures of selflessness are needed to build true community, Pope Leo XIV said yesterday. Source: OSV News.
“Obedience, in its deepest meaning of active and generous listening to others, is a great act of love by which we accept dying to ourselves so that our brothers and sisters may grow and live,” the Pope said during an audience with men and women from four religious orders.
Members of the general chapters or assemblies of the Ursuline Sisters of Mary Immaculate, the Missionaries of the Precious Blood, the Marists and the Franciscan Friars of the Immaculate met with the Pope in the Clementine Hall of the Apostolic Palace.
Pope Leo said he wanted to talk about “the vital importance of obedience as an act of love in religious consecration. Jesus gave us an example of this in his relationship with the Father: ‘I seek not my own will but the will of him who sent me.’”
St Augustine, the Pope said, defined obedience as “the daughter of charity.”
“Talking about obedience is not very fashionable today because it is considered a renunciation of freedom,” the Pope said.
“But that is not the case. When it is professed and lived with faith, obedience reveals a luminous path of self-giving that can help the world rediscover the value of sacrifice, the capacity for lasting relationships and the maturity in community that goes beyond the ‘feelings’ of the moment by establishing itself in fidelity.
“Obedience is a school of freedom in love.”
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Religious obedience is ‘act of love’ that builds community, Pope says (By Cindy Wooden, CNS via OSV News)
