Ordinary Time - Week 03c
Formation
(From Conversation with God, Fernandez Carvajal)In today's Mass we read the beginning of the Gospel according to Saint Luke, who tells us he has resolved to write down the life of Christ so that we may know the truth of the teachings we have received. Each of us, according to the unique circumstances of his life, has the obligation to know Christ's doctrine in depth. This obligation lasts for as long as our path here on earth shall continue. The growth of the Faith and of the Christian life, even more in the adverse context within which we are living, needs from us a positive effort and the continuous exercise of our personal liberty. This effort begins when we have come to see our faith as the most important thing in our lives. From this consideration is born an interest in knowing and practising all that is contained in our faith in God. This leads us to want to follow Christ throughout the complex and changing context of the reality of daily life. We must never allow ourselves to think we have had sufficient formation. We must never be satisfied with the amount of knowledge about Jesus Christ and his teaching that we have so far acquired. Love always seeks to know the beloved better. In professional life, doctors, say, or architects or lawyers, though they may be good at their profession never think they have finished studying once they have qualified: they go on learning - always. And so it is with the Christian. We can apply Saint Augustine's maxim to doctrinal formation: "Did you say, 'enough'? You have perished."
The quality of the instrument - for that is what we all are, instruments in God's hands - can improve, it can develop new possibilities. Each day we can love a little more and give better example. But we will not achieve this if our understanding is not continually nourished by sound doctrine. I cannot say how often I have been told that some old Irishman saying his rosary is holier than I am, with all my study. I daresay he is. For his own sake, I hope he is. But if the only evidence is that he knows less theology than I, then it is evidence that would convince neither him nor me. It would not convince him, because all those rosary-loving, tabernacle-loving old Irishmen I have ever known, were avid for more knowledge of the faith. It does not convince me, because while it is obvious that an ignorant man can be virtuous, it is equally obvious that ignorance is not a virtue; men have been martyred who could not have stated a doctrine of the Church correctly, and martyrdom is the supreme proof of love: yet with more knowledge of God they would have loved him more still.
The so-called plain man's faith ('I believe it all, even though I don't know what it is') is not sufficient for a Christian in the world who is confronted each day by confusion and a lack of light regarding Christ's doctrine - the only doctrine that saves - and is daily encountering ethical problems, both new and old, at work, in his family life, and in the environment in which he lives.
A Christian needs to have the answers which enable him to counter the attacks of the enemies of the Faith, and to know how to present them in an attractive way (nothing being gained by over-reaction, heated argument or bad humour), with clarity (without watering down important issues) and with precision (without sounding hesitantly uncertain.) Ignorance is often the daughter of laziness.