What You Know and What You Do May Not Be Enough

Any work worth its salt requires the worker to have some knowledge. It also requires action. Ideally our knowledge informs our actions. Here's a simple example from personal experience:

For the first few years after graduating from college I tried to earning a living as a musician. As is not uncommon for us musicians, what I earned wasn't enough to support a family. So eventually I had to take on additional work. In the parlance of the profession, it's known as a "day job."

With a liberal arts degree, and no special business acumen, I had to learn new skills from the ground up to get a day job that paid decently. New, specialized knowledge was required. Each level of knowledge manifested itself in my daily activities. My first few jobs required sales skills - not a natural fit for me. But with bills coming in I managed to pick up enough on the job and through various methods of study to get by OK. 

One thing I learned about sales is that activity matters. But mere activity doesn't always do the trick. You can know a lot about your product or service, and contact prospects who might buy them. But if you can't "close" - i.e., actually sell the product or service - knowledge and activity won't pan out all that well. You'll just be running around in circles. It also helps if you have a positive view of what you're selling: You must believe what you offer is good for your customer. That allows you to present your product in a positive manner, based on your belief.

So I learned that what you know and what you do may not be enough to succeed. I had to use what I knew in an effective manner. A basic level of enthusiasm about the product or service offered was important as well.

Recently, I came across something written by Rev. George Zimpfer about our spiritual lives that reminded me a bit of what I'd learned about my work (emphasis mine):

“The life we live is our greatest prayer. And that life does not consist so much in knowledge or activity as it does in knowing how to use what we have learned, in our mental attitude toward our activities, our interpretation of them."

That reflects what we do at work if we want to succeed. Here's how it applies to our spiritual life:

"If we would be truly spiritual, we must seek to fashion our own life upon that of Jesus, to think and act and speak with Him as Pattern and Guide. Our true life, as the Kingdom of God, is within us. What we do and how we do it are simply expressions of this spirituality.

“‘Imitation of Christ’ does not mean that we must seek an exact parallel of incidents in our lives and that of Jesus. It means that we must strive to think and act according to His spirit, as we should judge He would speak and act or think in any given circumstances. The hundreds of expressions of our spirituality are our own, just as the events of our Lord’s life were peculiarly His own. His day was not as our day; His circumstances of life were not as ours. Yet he lived, and he asks us to live in like manner." 

Knowing and acting, in and of themselves, will not serve our spiritual life. For example, learning spiritual "techniques" and/or spending inordinate amounts of time applying these techniques is off point. Simply memorizing reams of prayers and devotions and jamming them into our busy day won't deepen our spiritual life in and of themselves. As Rev. Zimpfer notes, "The life we live is our greatest prayer." 

So just as knowing and doing alone will not yield a good day's work, the same holds for our spiritual life. Our spiritual life must be focused on Jesus. And "Jesus" can't just be a word or an idea. He's a Person. We need to know this Person, Jesus. His life must shape ours. If we think being like Him is beyond our capability, Rev. Zimpfer puts us at ease:

"It is an ideal, of course, and we strive to approximate it. We must look beneath the outward circumstances, the mere activities of Christ’s life, and try to discover the deep moral truths and principles which guided them. Most of our Lord’s life was unexceptional, if viewed only in these circumstances. He was not always working miracles, but he lived among men and women graciously. What made Him a Light among men, a Light that shone with ever increasing brilliance until today His figure stands as the greatest in human history, was His inner life, His spirit. He came not only as the Son of God; He came to us also as the Son of Man. He not only died for us, but He lived for us as well, to show us how to live.”

Our work and our personal obligations may leave us little time for prayer, meditation, studying the truths of our Catholic Religion, reading good spiritual works. But here we see that what we know and our level of activity - what we do - isn't the point. What matters most is how deeply we know Jesus Christ. 

None of this implies we ought to forego our prayers, pious practices, our spiritual discipline. But, as in our work, what we know and what we do may not - likely will not - be enough.

So we want to learn to know and love Jesus.