In our world
today, one comes to discover that obedience as a virtue is only practiced when
it is convenient and favourable for the individual. Most of us prefer to obey
not just when it is easier but when we have something to gain from it.
Obedience is a difficult virtue to cultivate otherwise there would not be
incessant cases of people breaking civil and moral laws every day. Obedience
involves self-emptying (kenosis) because it is the offering up of one’s will to
do the will of another. It is the letting go of our ideologies, intentions and
actions to adopt those of the other and sometimes, unpleasant ones.
Today being
the last Sunday of lent which we traditionally call Palm/Passion Sunday, the
Church presents to us through the readings, the examples of Christ who learnt
to obey through humility and suffering. In the first part of today’s liturgy
(the blessing and procession with palms), we see Jesus’ great obedience to the
will of his Father by triumphantly entering the Holy City. Jesus was not just
triumphant in the manner with which he entered Jerusalem, he was more
triumphant in his obedience to accept death, death on a cross, even against the
wish of his special friend Peter (cf. Mk 8:33).
That is to say
that we can regard ourselves as being successful not when we win a legal battle
or an
