Obedience and Resignation

At  all points  Jesus’  doctrine  teaches obedience and resignation: two  very active companion virtues of  meekness, although people erroneously confuse them with the negation of sentiment and will. Obedience  is the consent of reason; resignation is the consent of the heart; both are active forces because they carry the burden of the trials that insensate rebellion lets drop. The coward cannot be resigned, just as the proud and selfish person cannot be obedient. Jesus was the incarnation of these virtues scorned by materialistic antiquity. He came at a time in which Roman society was perishing in the bankruptcy of corruption. He came to make the triumphs of sacrifice and renunciation of the flesh shine in the bosom of downcast humankind.

Every generation is thus marked with the stamp of either virtue or vice, which must either save or ruin it. The virtue of your generation is intellectual activity; its vice is moral indifference. I say “activity” only, for a genius might suddenly arise and single- handedly discover horizons that the multitudes will see only later, whereas “activity” is the combining of everyone’s efforts to reach a less-grandiose goal, but which nevertheless tests the intellectual advancement of that generation. Submit yourselves to the thrust we have come to give your spirits. Obey the great law of progress, which is the catch-phrase of your generation. Woe to lazy spirits, those who close off their understanding! Woe to them! For we who are the guides of humankind on the march will apply the whip to compel their rebellious wills through the two-fold effort of brake and spur. All prideful resistance will yield sooner or later. But blessed are they who are meek, for they will lend a willing ear to our teachings.

Lazare (Paris, 1863)