“Obedience without faith is possible, but not faith without obedience.”

'Obedience is mission: "I have come into this world to do the will of my Father, who has sent me." Where there is no obedience, there is no virtue; where there is no virtue there is no good; where good is wanting, there is no love, there is no God; where God is not, there is no Heaven.'--St. Padre Pio

Scripture text:

Brothers and sisters:

Every high priest is taken from among men

and made their representative before God,

to offer gifts and sacrifices for sins.

He is able to deal patiently with the ignorant and erring,

for he himself is beset by weakness

and so, for this reason, must make sin offerings for himself

as well as for the people.

No one takes this honor upon himself

but only when called by God,

just as Aaron was.

In the same way,

it was not Christ who glorified himself in becoming high priest,

but rather the one who said to him:

You are my Son:

this day I have begotten you;

just as he says in another place,

You are a priest forever

according to the order of Melchizedek.

In the days when he was in the Flesh,

he offered prayers and supplications with loud cries and tears

to the one who was able to save him from death,

and he was heard because of his reverence.

Son though he was, he learned obedience from what he suffered;

and when he was made perfect,

he became the source of eternal salvation for all who obey him.

Our lives are sometimes pictured as a fabric.

This fabric consists of family, marriage, children, friends, work, finances, social life, habits, entertainment, service, etc.

It is the old choice which still is presented to every soul; the old crisis which reappears in every experience. Caesar, or Christ, that is the question: the vast, attractive, skeptical world, with its pleasures and ambitions and its prodigal promise, or the meek, majestic, and winning figure of Him of Nazareth? The election remains for each of us. And the moment of the election, in the shaded and solemn "Valley of Decision," will be memorable in our history, when suns for us have ceased to shine!  One step forward in obedience is worth years of study about it.