Obbedienza 4. A wrong interpretation of the vow

Danger of a wrong interpretation of the vow of obedience
Having said the importance of following the rules we have to point out once again what we already said at the beginning: every act of obedience is first and foremost obedience to the will of God, and that all the rules are the instruments to help us to do the will of God.
The formation we received at home and in school while children, influences a lot the way we act now. We can see it clearly in the religious life where we have different ways to act on obedience. These are mainly a reaction to the formation received, especially in case of a discipline which was too strict or too lax and also the lack of motivations given to the seminarians on why they should act in that particular way. What was often missing was the presentation of values for life.
Let us analyze some common ways of life as we see them among religious.

The first way is called rebellion. A person is called a rebel when he purposely acts against the rules and rejects any kind of discipline. Usually those people feel that freedom means to do whatever they like, and they think that they will never be happy unless they do so. Their capacity of relationship is very limited. They do not know how to dialogue because they don’t trust in people. They feel rejected, abused, and they know that they have to fight in order to survive. They see easily the mistakes of other people, but never look at their own. They are intelligent and active but use their skills in the wrong way. These people got stuck at the first level of psychological life. Of course among religious nobody would rebel openly to the rules. The attitude comes when the religious starts abandoning the religious practices, missing the community moments, acting independently without asking permission from superiors and without reporting to them. All this is always done in the name of a more efficient apostolate, claiming that they are the only ones who do the will of God, which is to love the poor. Often the superiors are accused by them to be too cautious, to slow down the activities or living comfortably and for that reason fighting those who instead are for the poor. Though some of those accusations may be actually true, they cannot be an excuse for not living the vow, after all we made the vow to God not to a particular superior. More will be said in the paragraph about obedience and apostolate.

A second attitude may be called compliance. This is the opposite of the previous tendency. Since we were children we used to hear our parents to say: “Be a good boy, do not disobey”. Obedience to the parents has always been the flag of goodness, and disobedience, the first sin to be confessed. What we were expected to do was just to put in practice what we were commanded. Many people thus developed the attitude to follow all the rules, regulations, traditions, blindly. The importance is not in the meaning of the rules or in the values that the rules carry, but in the fact of obeying itself. In the past the religious obedience was very much understood in this way. Most of the times, the reason underneath is either fear of the superior or fear to make choices. It is much easier to stick to what other people say than to make choices with the risk of making mistakes. We could call those religious “yes father” religious. They repress their desires, their ideas and their capacity of seeing the reality, of planning, etcetera. The fear blocks them.
These people are seldom happy, because real happiness comes when you are satisfied with what you do and when you see yourself fulfilled in something. They have little self esteem and very few ideals, no much vision of future; survival becomes their attitude of life. The problem comes when the stimulus of their fear disappears (the superior is absent, the person is alone, or he is now the superior). In this case they tend to abandon things rather than decide how to do them. There are religious faithful to all prayer practices of the community, who, when they go home for holidays, they do not even go for Mass, unless their parents or the parish priest force them. These people got stuck at the second level of psychological life.

There is a third attitude which we could call identification. Here people tend to identify themselves with one of the superiors whom they like, appreciate or hold in high esteem. Their reason for doing things is to please that superior, not out of fear, but in order to attract his approval, or just because they feel that being like the superior, they too become good.
Like in the previous case, also here there is no importance given to the values of the rules, but what is important is only the relationship. They too have low self esteem, little capacity to decide for themselves, and they develop an attitude of dependency on that particular person. They do not have much of ideals for themselves except to become like their idol, thing that they rarely manage to achieve, and so they often feel low and guilty. Another possible ideal could be to be with that person as long as possible. Also this, of course, is impossible, so they often feel abandoned, not understood, rejected.
Their problem starts when they have to change community, or the superior is transferred. They find difficult to adjust to the new environment, they do not want to take up responsibilities or start new ventures. One solution they find is to become passive, over-interested in television, computers, internet. Some become rebellious. Even these people got stuck at the second level of psychological life..

Finally there is an attitude which we could call “Internalization”. Here the person has learned how to focus on the values carried by the commands he is obeying. In order to do so he has to make use of his intelligence, to understand what is the deep meaning of things. If there are things he cannot understand, then he can appeal to faith. The understanding and the faith give him the reasons to act promptly in active and creative way. Seeing the result of his doings, the person is often happy and thinks in a positive way. He knows how to focus and is not afraid of responsibilities or new ventures. He is used to live in the third dimension and knows how to deal with all the drives coming to him from the other two dimensions.