We monks will do well to examine ourselves again on these two points and see how well we are measuring up to what God has a right to expect of us. To be continually at the service of others, at the service of one's community, is again no light cross, and again, try it if you don't believe it's true. No more penance, no more self-denial than these, humility and obedience, will be required even over the course of a long monastic life, for if we are perfectly humble and perfectly obedient we are ready for canonization, and it is not a rash judgment to say, or at least to suspect, that no one here this morning has advanced that far on the road that leads to God. We said that, when the angel came to her at Nazareth with God's plan, Mary was obedient, humble and free. It is not true to say that obedience takes away freedom.
Obedience is a setting in which freedom can more easily and more perfectly operate.
The ability to sin is a corruption of freedom. And freedom from internal and external coercion gives our acts, or better, gives us, a joy in God's service we could not otherwise have. Even in the midst of profound suffering and deprivation, weighed down by all manner of heavy crosses, even then we can and should be joyful, for we have the sure knowledge that God is with us. He, source of all light and life, he, the New Adam would undo all the mischief started by the first Adam. No matter what our vocation in life, we may confidently look to Mary as exemplar.