BY ARCHBISHOP SOC VILLEGAS
What are you searching for? You are looking for happiness and peace? You are looking for prosperity and wealth? You are looking for health and success? You are looking for a best friend forever? You are looking for a job and a fulfilling career? You are looking for joy and true freedom?
What are you searching for?
Simone Weil was asked the same question and she replied “I’m searching for someone to be obedient to because without obedience we inflate and grow silly, even to ourselves.” She was wise. She knew that obedience is the key to all that we are searching for.
Mary in the Gospels is a woman of many virtues but her foremost virtue is obedience. Giving away freedom is what makes us free. Freedom is not possessed by working for freedom for freedom’s sake.
The highest form of freedom is obedience. There is a childish understanding of freedom as freedom from limits and inhibitions. Freedom is understood as the power to do what you like. Maturity of freedom is reached when we give ourselves, when we live for others, when duty and service is freely embraced without resentment as founts of joy. The antidote to sin is obedience. The devil can imitate light and attract us. The devil can fake happiness and mislead us. The devil cannot obey. If devils could obey they would be awesome angels.
The sure way to salvation and happiness is obedience. The “yes” of the annunciation is like a thread that leads to nowhere else but the “yes” at Calvary. The obedience of Jesus saves us and heals the disobedience of sinful Adam.
What are you searching for? Everything that you are searching for can be found by carrying the master key to all the locked doors. The master key is obedience. How does obedience open locked doors? Because love is obedient and obedience is love. The pandemic of unhappiness and unrest has a vaccine. It is obedience. Obedience leads to happiness. It leads to peace.