Psallam​​ TIBI​

 

OB AUDIENT

 

SO WILL THEY LISTEN: those who are obedient to the word of the Lord, for it is not written on stone slabs or in rules, but carved into our hearts. In this way, the monastic vow of obedience is the foremost virtue of the monk, for it is in listening to the call of his Lord that he first approaches the monastery, and by inclining the ear of his heart that he embarks on a life that listens ever more discerningly to the promptings of his Master. Obedience is an active listening that transfigures the heart and leads it back to God, from whom we have departed through the sloth of disobedience – because the disobedient are too lazy to listen, and hear only what they want to hear, and seek to shape the word to conform to their own will. They may see what the obedient do and try to appear the same, but their observance is not obedience. For from the outside they may do all those things that appear right and just and holy, but if they have not listened, if they have not internalised the word into their hearts, then their observance is merely empty gestures, falling short of the obedience that leads to conversatio morum. Without listening there can be no obedience, and without obedience we are are own masters, and we become an end unto ourselves.

 

So the voice from the cloud shrouding Mount Tabor expounds no complicated formula for Christian discipleship, but one solitary command: “This is my Son, the Chosen One. Listen to him.” Our life as disciples of Christ is thus defined as learning not first by doing – for even a performing monkey can see and imitate – but by listening, and from the listening of the heart to be so moved as to follow the master. And yet the word is seldom easy to listen to, because it challenges our very understanding of God and of ourselves as his creation. Ask Peter: the first to acknowledge Jesus as the Messiah and Son of the living God, and yet in almost the same breath, the first to reject the message that Christ must suffer and die and then be raised.

 

As the disciples, then, begin the journey with their Lord to Calvary, and with them, we who have been called to follow the way of the Cross to glory, God’s message today is clear: listen. Listen as the Messianic secret is revealed, and hang upon the words of Christ who speaks as did the Word over the darkness on the dawn of creation; speaking of light, of life, of love, once lost and now regained; of the fulfilment of God’s covenantal plan of salvation; and of a new covenant no more in the blood of lambs but in the blood of the Lamb of God; God made Man, that man should realise the fullness of the image in which he was created, and which “implores humankind to become gods for God’s sake, since God became man for our sakes.” (St. Gregory Nazianzen)

 

And as we have seen that the call to a life of conversatio morum is not just the monk’s but the universal vocation of those called to Christ’s side, so the listening heart of obedience must too be cultivated as the starting point of our life’s journey with Christ to the Cross. For our faithful response to the call of God, as we descend the mount of the Transfiguration and prepare ourselves to enter into the Paschal Mystery, is obedience and conversatio morum together, as the Psalmist has said:

 

“I will listen to what God the Lord will say; For He will speak peace to His people, to His godly ones; But let them not turn back to folly.” (Ps.85:8)