Follow Me

From faith springs that obedience to God in his Church and the merit accruing to your souls, for which you can never be sufficiently thankful. This filial obedience to which the apostle exhorts us, "Let us serve, pleasing God with fear and reverence," our Redeemer himself has made the crowning proof of all his disciples; the sure bond of membership with his mystical body, the Church; the witness of union with him who is our head, our life, our salvation. For he has said - and are there any words of the Holy Writ more worthy of being written in letters of gold, or which should be more familiar to Christians? - "If you love me, keep my commandments. He that has my comandments and keeps them, he it is that loves me. And he that loves me shall be loved by my Father, and I will love him, and will manifest myself to him. If any man loves me, he will keep my words and my Father will love him, and we will come to him, and will make an abode with him. He that loves me not, keeps not my words. If you keep my commandments, you will remain in my love; as I also have kept my Father's commandments, and do remain in his love. You are my friends, if you do the things I command you" (Jn 14: 15-24; 15: 10-14).

Such was the language, such were the thoughts of Jesus Christ on that last evening, when as the God-Man turning once more to his heavenly Father with the words "that the world may know that I love the Father, and as the Father has given me commandment, so I do: arise, let me go hence." He bent his steps to the garden of Gethsemane, there to pour forth his prayers, his tears, his blood; and the next day to die on the cross of Calvary. Oh! How profitably may man draw near and with all the powers of his soul attend and learn obedience from an Incarnate God who for our example is obedient unto death, even death of the cross.

-Saint John Neumann

Saint John Neumann (1860) was born in Bohemia. He moved to America, joined the Redemptorists, and was appointed bishop of Philadelphia in 1852.