HTS PT1 Obedience

Introduction

• Obedience is the linchpin of all areas of Diocesan priesthood
• Obedience to Bishop is easy to see (lived-out obedience), but secondary to being in imitation of Jesus

Evangelical Counsels

• Everyone is called to the same depth of holiness
  • Level of holiness was commonly conflated with vocation (i.e., only the monks can achieve the highest holiness)
  • Vatican II clarified that vocation/holiness conflation is not the case: "universal call to holiness"
• Poverty, chastity, and obedience are for everyone
  • lived out according to each person's particular calling
  • Diocesan priests in particular:
    • Chastity is easy to figure out
    • Poverty: simplicity of life (not crazy) while maintaining what is necessary to carry out one's duties

Theo-Drama of Obedience

• Jesus' entire ministry is in obedience to the Father: totaliter ad Patrem
  • As the second person of the Trinity, Jesus is Obedience incarnate: He is a "being-totally-toward-the-father" being
  • Priest is called to become this through ordination
  • Thus, obedience is the heart of the priesthood

True Freedom

• Obedience is fullest exercise of freedom
  • Freedom is not "license" to do whatever you want (as if your desires were perfectly aligned)
  • Freedom oriented to self-determination
    • Learn about ourselves and align ourselves with who we were meant to be
    • Joyful readiness to do God's Will
    • "Freedom to fulfill the law, not to break it" — Christopher West

Suffering

• Obedience is normally learned through Suffering
  • All throughout the Letter to the Hebrews
  • Christ learned obedience through much suffering
  • Should a priest expect any different?
    • Suffering should be more bearable through beloved sonship
• Jesus Christ as the Victim: offering himself in sacrifice

Inner Form

• Ordained priesthood is supposed to make transparent, make present, make effective Christ's inner form
  • inner form = Christ's mission from the Father
• Sacramental: makes visible and effacacious an internal and invisible reality
• Dispositional Obedience:
  • "Doing flows from being"
  • Christ's obedience ("eternal receptive readiness") toward the Father is an inner disposition that goes beyond the incarnation
  • Total giving of self, and letting self be sent
    • Coming from the Father and returning to the Father
    • Just like liturgical action (↓↑↓)

Christ, as an obedient son, surrenders himself into the Father (as priest), so that the Father can then hand him over (as the perfect Victim) for the salvation of the world: He gives himself up (active) to let himself be given up (passive).

Priest is called to do the same:

• Holy Orders "reconfigurates" the inner form of man to that of Christ: ontological, incarnational obedience
• Just as Christ's climax of obedience was Calvary, the Priest's climax of obedience is the same sacrifice of the Mass.

Kenosis: Self-Emptying

Theological trick: Just as Jesus was in his humanity, so too is he in his eternal divinity

Father initiates this act even prior to the son

• Father does not hold divinity to Himself, but empties His entire self out to the Son
• The Son is "God from God, Light from Light, True God from True God, Begotten, not made, consubstantial with the Father."
• Divinity of Father completely given to the Son, but simultaneously fully retained

Only in holding-onto-nothing-for-himself-ness is God Father. He pours his substance into the Son. The son shows forth his origin by holding-onto-nothing-for-himself.

Great complementarity of "emptyingness" shared between the Father and the Son.

Calvary is what kenotic love looks like.

Lose subjectivity to obtain Christ's authority.