St. Maximilian Kolbe on obedience

I think it’s a message more of us need to hear — now, more than ever.  I stumbled on this in the Office of Readings for his feast, which was August 14. It comes from his letters:

It is obedience and obedience alone that shows us God’s will with certainty. Of course our superiors may err, but it cannot happen that we, holding fast to our obedience, should be led into error by this. There is only one exception: if the superior commands something that would obviously involve breaking God’s law, however slightly. In that case the superior could not be acting as a faithful interpreter of God’s will…He himself makes His holy will known to us through His vice-regents on Earth and draws us to Himself, and through us – for so He has willed – draws other souls too, and unites them to Himself with an ever more perfect love.

…See then, brother, the tremendous honor of the position that God in his kindness has placed us in. Through obedience we transcend our own limitations and align ourselves with God’s will, which, with infinite wisdom and prudence, guides us to do what is best. Moreover, as we become filled with the divine will, which no created thing can resist, so we become stronger than all others.

This is the path of wisdom and prudence, this is the one way by which we can come to give God the highest glory. After all, if there had been another, better way, Christ would certainly have shown it to us, by word and by example. But in fact sacred Scripture wraps up his entire long life in Nazareth with the words and he was obedient to them and it shows the rest of his life to have been passed in similar obedience – almost as an instruction to us – by showing how he came down to Earth to do the Father’s will…

…All this we will achieve more easily through the intercession of the Immaculate Virgin, to whom the most kind God has given the task of dispensing His mercies. There is no doubt that the will of Mary should be the will of God for us. When we dedicate ourselves to Him, we become tools in her hands just as she became a tool in His. Let us let her direct us and lead us by the hand. Let us be calm and serene under her guidance: she will foresee all things for us, provide all things, swiftly fulfil our needs both bodily and spiritual, and keep away from us all difficulty and suffering.