As someone who loves learning languages and linguistics, I find great pleasure in exploring the roots and origins of words. Take “obedience”. It does not simply mean doing whatever a master or leader commands. The word comes from the Latin oboedire (to hear, to listen), derived from ob– (to) and audire (to hear). In mediaeval English, it meant “a willingness to serve” or “to fulfil an obligation”. By around 1200, it had come to mean the “practice or virtue of submission to a higher power or authority (Harper, nd)”.
For the Society of Jesus, obedience is at the heart of everything. It’s not a passive response but a readiness to be sent. From the time of Ignatius of Loyola, Jesuits have promised to follow God’s call through their superiors and, in a special fourth vow, through the Pope for mission. That commitment is shaped over many years. It begins with two years in the novitiate, followed by vows of poverty, chastity, and obedience. After a long formation and years in ministry, a Jesuit completes Tertianship, the final stage. Only then, through careful discernment and approval, does he make Final Vows: three solemn promises and, for some, a fourth vow expressing a radical willingness to go anywhere, for any mission, when called.
On Easter Monday, 6 April, in the Chapel of the Holy Spirit at the Seven Fountains Jesuit Spirituality Centre in Chiang Mai, Thailand, something special took place. Fr Manasarn Wongwarn SJ, known as Fr Yord, knelt before Fr Miguel Garaizabal SJ, the Regional Superior of the Jesuits in Thailand, and pronounced his Final Vows in the Society of Jesus. It was the obedience of a free man. One who had listened deeply for almost 26 years in the Society of Jesus, who had discerned with both mind and heart, and who finally said, with trust and love in God: “Here I am. Send me.”
Fr Yord considers the pilgrimage he undertook as a novice one of the most transformative experiences of his life. In the Jesuit novitiate, a pilgrimage is a formative spiritual experience in which a novice is sent on a journey with little money and no fixed security, relying on God’s providence and the kindness of others. At first, Fr Yord relied on himself, but gradually he learnt to trust in God’s love and providence. It was a genuine obedience to God, without fear of following even a difficult call. It was like bungee jumping, knowing that the safety gear will not let you fall to the ground, except that God’s love and providence are more reliable than any equipment.
Fr Yord’s profession of Final Vows was a beautiful example of ob-audire—a listening that does not end in resignation but in self-gift. It is a life offered with open hands, a love mature enough to follow even when the road ahead is not fully visible because it trusts the One who has laid it.
