Obedience is never truly tested when it is easy or agreeable. It reveals its divine nature only when it costs everything, when it rends the heart open, when it demands that one stand before God stripped of all defense or assurance. At such moments, when all seems lost, obedience ceases to be a discipline and becomes a mystery, a communion with the crucified love of Christ.
There are times when obedience feels like dying. One’s will, long accustomed to finding meaning in recognition, affirmation, or fruitfulness, suddenly meets a silence that cannot be reasoned with. The soul cries out for understanding, but heaven gives none. It is then that a deeper work begins. The death is not of the body but of that inner self that still clings to control, to one’s own vision of what holiness or service should look like.
Archimandrite Zacharou, following his elder St. Sophrony, speaks of this as a “taste of death” that becomes life. To deny one’s own will in obedience is not self-annihilation but transfiguration. It draws the soul into the very motion of divine love, for God Himself is obedient; the Son to the Father, the angels to His word, the saints to His providence. When one gives up one’s own will and accepts even what seems unjust or incomprehensible, a door opens into the heart of heaven.
To be obedient is to live in holy tension, straining always to discern the will of God hidden in the will of the other. It teaches the heart to listen beyond words, to sense the quiet movements of grace in circumstances that the mind resists. When Zacharou says that obedience gives freedom and purity of mind, he is describing this miracle: that the more one dies to one’s own reasoning, the more one sees with the simplicity of angels.
This kind of obedience often leaves one vulnerable, even foolish in the eyes of others. It may seem as though one’s life is wasted, one’s gifts buried, one’s vocation misunderstood. Yet as St. Peter of Damaskos writes, the obedient soul becomes like a beast before God, unthinking, wholly led, yet continually with Him. What appears to be loss becomes nearness, a continual presence in the face of God.
When obedience requires all, when it pierces the heart and empties it of its own designs, then it becomes the very soil in which divine life is sown. The monk, the priest, the believer who endures this interior death begins to taste the incorruptible love of God. Tears flow not from despair but from the strange sweetness of surrender.
In such moments, prayer becomes pure. The Name of Christ rises unbidden from the depths, not as repetition but as life itself. The Jesus Prayer becomes the unutterable groaning of the heart, the Spirit interceding within. One no longer prays for understanding or vindication, but simply for union.
Obedience, then, is not servitude but likeness to Christ. It is the narrow path by which the will of earth is joined to the will of heaven. It is the way of angels and of saints. And when it wounds most deeply, it bears the richest fruit, for it gives birth to the one thing needful; the heart that rests undivided in the presence of God.
“Yet I am continually with Thee,” says the Psalmist. “In Your presence, I am undivided.”
This is the final word of obedience: not explanation, not reward, but presence.
To remain with Him.
To abide in His will.
To taste death and find it filled with life.
This reflection is influenced by the writing of
Archimandrite Zacharias Zacharou
Perfect Surrendering to the Spirit of Salvation
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