“Contemplating the scenes of the Passion helps us to value ever more highly the importance of obedience in the plan of our salvation. Therefore, if we Christians should follow the same path that Christ did (follow in his steps, the Head of the Apostles urges us (1 Pet 2:21)), we also have to show great appreciation for this holy virtue that inserts us in the divine plan of Redemption and enables us truly to be co-redeemers. The obedience of Catholics, and ours therefore, has to be an obedience like Christ’s, which stems from love and is sustained by love.
“As a consequence of original sin, of that first disobedience, all of us bear within a seed of rebellion and the exaltation of our own will . . . We see as it were a widespread attack against anything that entails authority, in first place against God and the Church. This rebellion I am speaking about is nothing new in the world: it has always been present, and will be a danger as long as the world endures. But today it seems as though the echo of the first rebellion—the non serviam! declared by Satan and the rebellious angels—has become even more insistent.
“God wants us to bear witness to Christ, showing the men and women around us the marvelous example of coherent Christian conduct, in which obedience shines forth like a splendid jewel. Submitting, out of love for God, to legitimate authority in the various sphere of human life. Obeying above all the Roman Pontiff and the Church’s Magisterium” (Letter, April 1988).