01-22# The Rule of our Holy Father Benedict. Chapter 5: Concerning Obedience
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The first degree of humility is obedience without delay. This is becoming to those who value nothing as more dear to them than Christ, on account of the holy servitude they have professed, whether through fear of hell or on account of the glory of life eternal. As soon as any order has been given by a superior, as being the same as if the order were divinely given, they can brook no delay in carrying it out. Concerning these the Lord says: “As the ear heard, he obeyed Me.” And again He says to teachers: “He who hears you, hears Me.”

Therefore such as these, at once relinquishing what they are doing, desert their own will and quickly freeing their hands by leaving unfinished what they were about, proceed with the foot of ready obedience to carry out the order given; and it is as if, in the case of those upon whom rests the love of attaining to life eternal, both things, the command first spoken by the master and the perfected work of the disciple, were in a single moment, with a quickness due to holy fear of God, mutually unfolded with great swiftness. Thus do they seize the narrow way of which the Lord says: “Narrow is the way that leads to life”; so that not guiding themselves in life by their own judgment they obey not their own desires and wishes, but walking by the judgment and commands of another, pass their life in community and are more than content to have an abbot over them. Without doubt such as these reproduce that maxim of the Lord’s wherein He says: “I came not to do My will, but His Who sent Me.”
