Christian Knowledge Requires Action

Greetings,

            The following passage from The Inward Vision by Jesuit Father R. H. J. Steuart is not easy reading, but is a thoughtful consideration of the practicality of following Jesus.  (Many of you have read Charles Sheldon’s In His Steps and will see connections.)

            No lofty reasonings about God and about His relations to us and ours will do away with the obstinate fact that if we love Him really, and not in our reveries alone, we must love our neighbour too, really, and not in theory alone.  It is no use at all to see (as who can fail to see?) that He is in all things and persons and consequently is to be found and loved in them and they in Him, unless our belief flows over into action and in the practical affairs of daily life we do thus see Him and them too and do act upon what we see.  Few things are more disconcerting than the oft-recurring phenomenon of high ideals and fine and subtle speculations upon the nature of God and of the spiritual life—much devotion too, and even austerity—in combination with an almost total insensibility to the duty of charity to others.  In such persons one is sometimes bewildered to find a sort of contempt for this realized charity, as if it were an inferior, elementary, unintelligent kind of thing.  Or perhaps, by a remarkable obliquity of judgement, they will consider that their superior perceptions somehow absolve them from deference to this Commandment, or at least from anything so coarse as putting it into vulgar practice.  But though one may be a competent art critic without having ever handled a brush or a chisel, and may legitimately pass judgement upon a book which one could not have written oneself, in the life of the soul there are no such privileges: knowledge there is no knowledge at all unless it is also and equally action, and if it is not that, then it is worse then ignorance.

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Let us now come and be with God as we reflect on our sins and neglected opportunities of the past week.

God, as we look back and think of how we did not live up to your standard this past week, help us to visualize how we WILL live up to the standard Jesus gave this coming week. We know all the days won't be with birds chirping and bees buzzing, but with your strength we will do your will and provide love for those in need.

Yours & His,

DED