“True, daughter. It blinds its victims here, and its wages hereafter is death.”
“That’s why I fear to disobey my mother; what if it be sin to do so?”
“The command, my child, is ‘children obey your parents—in the Lord.”
“What does ‘in the Lord’ mean?”
“I’ll tell thee, my little catechumen; there comes a time to some youths, in pious life, when duty to God compels disobedience of parents; as it came to Jonathan, son of Saul. God is Father and mother to the righteous, and His law must be first. Mary left home and every thing, first and last, to follow Jesus. Her way was the Christian’s.”
“I thought once I was right in obeying my mother without question. Now I think I may be right in disobeying without question. The old and the new law are at war within me.”
“Amid these Bashan hills Paul, the Holy Saint, traveled, led of God from thinking that directly opposite to his former beliefs, the truth. Jesus met him then on the way to Damascus, in power and in glory; Paul had been for a long time a profound scholar, a Pharisee of thy people. On this journey, enlightened by the spirit, he asked and learned sincerely to ask, the question of questions in this life; ‘Lord what wilt thou have me to do?’ I beseech thee to ask it daughter, as thy hourly prayer.”
“Did God answer Paul?”
“Yea.”