Admonition III

Created from a morphed glass ballPeace and All Good

 

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2008

• Admonitons-archives • The Admonitons • Admonition II • Admonition III

 

Chapter III

On perfect obedience

The Lord says in his Gospel "No one can be my disciple unless they ‘will’ give up everything they have. (Luke 14:33b)”

·    For “those who want to save their own lives, will lose them, but if they lose their lives for my sake, they will save them. “Luke 9:24”

·   They give up everything they have and lose their own bodies who give up everything for the sake of obedience to their Superior.

·     Whatever a superior asks of that servant that is not contrary to that servant’s conscience and that that servant knows is good, is true obedience.

·    When a subject  sees that they might do more useful things for their soul than what their superior determines for them, let them sacrifice these gladly to God and fulfil their superior’s will.

·   For this is obedience borne out of love since it satisfies both God and neighbour. (cf. 1 Peter 1:22)

·    If ,however, the superior instructs that servant to do anything against that servant’s soul, then they are not to obey him,  nevertheless let that servant not give up their superior.

·   And if that servant has endured persecution from others for that superior’s sake, let him love his persecutors all the more for God’s sake.

·   For those servants who are willing to endure persecution, rather than desiring separation from the offenders, truly continue in perfect obedience since they lay down their lives for others. (cf. John 15:13)

·   Many religious, while seeming to see better things than  their superior determines for them, look back  ( cf. Luke 9 : 62) and return “ to the vomit” of their own wilfulness ( cf. Proverbs 26:11; 2 Peter 2 : 22);

·   These, because of their bad examples, are murderers since they cause many souls to perish.

 

Paraphrase Br Andrew EFO - this admonition is most unclear since Francis uses pronouns throughout and in the original text it is not clear which 'he' is 'he'.

Francis’ intention is I believe to explain the purpose and manner of obedience. Francis begins in that hard place called ‘Possessions’.

 

Weymouth New Testament

http://weymouthbible.com/luke/14.htm

If our desire is to be a disciple of Christ then the Lord asks: Our detachment from all our loved ones and all our worldly goods; to the degree that we hate our relatives for love of Jesus. (Luke 14:33) so that we can concentrate on our service to God.

The manner of discipleship, for the Religious, is to place ourselves under obedience to a Superior, as though that one were Christ. To give up our own desires for our soul and all concepts of wisdom and to allow our superior to form us according to the way the Lord leads them so to do.

"If any one is desirous of following me, let him ignore self and take up his cross day by day, and so be my follower” (Luke 9:24b)

Detachment and ignorance?

The Cross is ourselves and each morning when we dedicate ourselves to God’s service we detach ourselves from ourselves. We relinquish any ideas we have of our own for our spiritual development, ignore them and place ourselves in our superior’s hands.

Anything good that they ask us to do, so we do for love of them, anything they ask of us that is contrary to our conscience that we do not do. Yet we do not forsake that one and if in remaining with them we are subject to persecution then all the better for God’s sake.

If after all this we decide to lean on our own understanding (Proverbs 3:5;NASB)  then we return “to the vomit” of our own wilfulness (cf. Proverbs 26:11; 2 Peter 2 : 22) and  undo all the good worked in us and become as we were -Such bad examples may cause others to stumble.

"These little ones believe in me. It would be best for the person who causes one of them to lose faith to be thrown into the sea with a large stone hung around his neck.” (Mark 9:42;God’s Word Translation 1995)

 Scripture from Bible .com

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Updated Wednesday April 30, 2008 - Br Andrew EFO