On Study

By Fr. Conor Donnelly

(Proofread)

In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.

My Lord and my God, I firmly believe that you are here, that you see me, that you hear me. I adore you with profound reverence. I ask your pardon for my sins and grace to make this time of prayer fruitful. My Immaculate Mother, Saint Joseph, my father and lord, my guardian angel, intercede for me.

A number of years ago in Ireland there was an abortion referendum. A professor of mine was quite involved, and I went to see him.

He told me that in the 1940s and 1950s, when they were training in England and there was a difficult case—a hypertensive mother, an asthmatic mother, or a diabetic mother—the treatment was to abort the baby.

They were Catholics. They couldn't get involved in that, and when they came back to Ireland, they couldn't do those things either.

So they had to turn around and learn how to treat the hypertensive mother, and the asthmatic mother, and the diabetic mother.

That, coupled with the high birth rate that was in Ireland at the time, led to great advances in obstetrical medicine, neonatal medicine, the management of labor. They had to deliver a healthy mother and a healthy baby at the end of all of this.

The punchline of his message was that we Catholics sometimes have an inferiority complex because we say no to this and no to that, no to contraception, no to abortion, no to euthanasia.

“But,” he said, “we have the truth, and when we apply the truth in areas that really matter, then we come up with authentic development.” It's a very interesting statement to hear from a professor of science.

Our Lord has encouraged us to know the truth. St. Paul says to Timothy, “He wants everyone to be saved and to reach the full knowledge of the truth” (1 Tim. 2:4).

Part of our Christian vocation is that we get to know the truth a little better. Moral truth is a great liberating force.

We are exposed to infinite truth, infinite goodness, infinite beauty. For us to come to know the full knowledge of the truth, that means we have to study.

This meditation is about study.

God has given us the capacity. He wants us to use that capacity to serve Him with our mind.

“We don't have to know many things,” somebody said once, “but we just have to know a few things, but those few things we need to know them very clearly.”

We should never lose contact with our study: with the spirit of study or a habit of study.

It's a grace in our vocation to help us to do that in order to come to the knowledge of the truth. These “remain faithful to the teaching of the apostles, to the brotherhood, to the breaking of bread, and to the prayers” (Catechism of the Catholic Church, Point 84).

The teaching of the apostles is very important, that we know that teaching, we know it clearly, that we are able explain it.

Words and phrases are vehicles that we use to communicate truth.

Quintilian, a famous Latin writer in the early centuries said, “Clarity of expression lights up the beauty of the world.”

So our study involves not just knowing things, but knowing how to communicate them, improving our vocabulary, improving our grammar, improving the way we say things, so as to make that truth more attractive and clearer to our hearers.

We're told in St. John, “When the Spirit of truth comes, he will lead you to the complete truth, since he will not be speaking of his own accord, but will say only what he has been told, and he will reveal the things to come” (John 16:13).

He will lead us to the complete truth. We don't grasp truth just in one go; it's an ongoing process. Our intellectual formation is something that has to keep going all through our life.

One writer said once, “There is nothing as powerful as an idea whose time has come” (Victor Hugo, Great Ideas of Western Man).

It may be that in the latter years of our life, the Holy Spirit will give us an idea “whose time has come”, an idea that will make a great impact on the world.

We're instruments in the hands of the Artist, and we don't know how the Artist wants to use us. But we have to try and work to be better instruments.

That means that we form our minds. We try to be a person of learning, to be erudite, so that we can attract with ideas, with culture.

The Second Vatican Council defines culture as “everything that humanizes the person.”

I was having lunch with an Archbishop of Singapore one time, or not lunch but a cup of tea, and the people who had prepared the tea wheeled in a trolley into the room. There were just two of us there.

The Archbishop looked at the trolley and he said, “This is culture.”

I looked again at the trolley, wondering if I was missing something. I associated culture with Shakespeare and Dickens. But then I realized he was referring to that Second Vatican Council definition of culture: “everything that humanizes people.” There was a cup and a saucer and a teaspoon and a plate and a serviette. It was all very nicely prepared.

He said, “This is culture.” It makes us feel like human beings. We have to try and be a person of culture; feed our mind on good things.

If we have little time to study, then we have to go and do various things to try and increase that spirit of study. If we have little time, we have to try and feed our mind on things that will really enrich us.

If we're reading an article in the newspaper, or watching a movie, or any book, and we find, this is not going to be apostolically useful, or it's giving me bad ideas, then for what purpose would we continue reading?

The little time we have has to be spent on good things. We don't read just to enjoy, but to learn, to clarify our ideas a little more.

When Christ was setting up His Church, He didn't give the apostles money or technology. He gave them ideas.

To a large extent, Christianity is a series of ideas, wonderful ideas. The ideas with which Christ wants us to shape the world are all contained in the Catechism of the Catholic Church.

As we grow in our formation, hopefully we absorb those ideas a little more, a little better, all the time.

We're told in St. John, “My teaching is not from myself. It comes from the one who sent me” (John 7:16).

“…and so be able to lead a life worthy of the Lord,” says St. Paul, “a life acceptable to Him in all its aspects, bearing fruit in every kind of good work and growing in the knowledge of God” (Col. 1:10).

I was presenting a patient once in an obstetric ward-round to a professor and eight or ten other students that were on the bed. We were supposed to know all the medical details about the patient.

This particular professor also liked us to know a few social details. The question he liked us to ask was, Who is looking after this woman's children while she's in hospital? Usually mothers are not concerned about their hypertension or their diabetes, but they're thinking about their kids at home.

I knew all the medical details okay, but then I had forgotten to ask about who was looking after her children at home.

When I finished my presentation, the professor immediately asked, So who is looking after this lady's children while she's in hospital?

I had forgotten to ask, so I decided to kick for touch.

I said, I don't know for definite.

He responded by saying, Does that mean you don't know at all?

Then he proceeded to give a brief lecture to the other students that were on the bed about how, in the English language, we have these very convenient phrases that are very useful for covering up our abysmal ignorance.

Of course, I wanted the ground to open and swallow me, but I learned a good lesson.

We have to know for definite. We have to know our stuff. We have to be competent workers. We have to know the details.

That's what study is all about. Study is for us to know things.

If, on some occasion, we're having difficulty absorbing the material that's in front of us on the page, one fellow student said to me once, “If it won't go in, you have to kick it in.”

We have to try and conquer our intellectual laziness; fight to concentrate; to live intensity in our periods of study, so that we make good use of the time that we spend acquiring this new knowledge.

God wants us to do much more with our study than other people do with violence.

Some people, to try to change society or change the world, they take to the streets. They baton-charge policemen, they set fire to cars, they throw stones.

As followers of Christ, we have to try and go further with our study. We can do much more with study than others do with other things, because that truth is very powerful. “The truth will make you free” (John 8:32).

There was a kid once who was brought by his father to a national park at a young age. In the national park the child saw an elephant.

He got this concept of “elephant” into his mind. Big animal, big feet, small tail, big tusks, big trunk.

He went away and he maintained his interest in elephants. He asked for drawing books about elephants and storybooks about elephants.

As he grew up through primary and secondary school, he maintained that interest in elephants.

He went to university, studied zoology, and eventually did a Master's and a Doctorate specializing in elephants, and then wrote papers about elephants and spoke at conferences around the world. He became a world expert on this particular topic.

But it was said that all his knowledge of elephants was built up on one simple concept of “elephant” that he learned one day with his father in the national park.

The moral of the story is that all our knowledge is built up on a few simple ideas or concepts. Occasionally, we have to go back to those basic ideas to strengthen them, to get them clearer.

Like an architect who wants to build on something else for his house—an extra room—he goes back to look at the foundations. We can never have too much of the foundations to get those basic ideas clearer.

Albert Einstein once said, “Never regard study as a duty but as the enviable opportunity to learn to know the liberating influence of beauty in the realm of the spirit for your own personal joy and to the profit of the community to which your later work belongs.”

“Never regard study as a duty.” At one stage in our life, we might all have regarded study as a duty.

But hopefully, with the grace of God, we come to regard it in a different light with the passage of time: “the enviable opportunity to learn to know the liberating influence of beauty in the realm of the spirit.”

And so, even if at one stage in our life the thing to which we might have seemed most allergic was study, with the grace of God we can undergo a transformation and come to acquire the habit of study, the virtue of study, so that whenever we have a few moments, while we're reading an article or we're reading a book, we have something going. We're improving our knowledge or our competence all the time.

St. Josemaría used to recommend that professional people could try to choose one specific area, and over the period of a couple of years to try and read everything that was coming out on that particular area.

Little by little, you come to be the person in the country that knows the most about that particular topic. You become a national expert.

I attended a pro-life conference in Manila many years ago and there was a lady doctor there from Liverpool in her 60s. Her practice was winding down and her son was taking over.

I asked her how she got to be a speaker at this international conference, and she told me that for a number of years, she had watched the medical journals for the articles that were coming out about the side effects of contraceptives.

She developed an interest in that, and she began to read everything that was coming out.

Then she noticed that a lot of this was not getting into the national newspapers. So she wrote to the London Times and the Manchester Guardian.

Eventually, the BBC noticed her letters. They invited her on to a talk show to talk about this topic. She became the national expert.

Then Human Life International realized who she was and what she was doing, and they invited her to be one on the panel of their international speakers speaking at international conferences.

In the latter part of her professional life, she had an influence that was far greater than anything she had in the previous decades. That was a very interesting phenomenon.

There's always something new to learn. If we develop that habit of study, we will acquire that knowledge that over time can become very useful for other people. It can be very useful apostolically.

One of the ways that we study is to consult books to clarify definitions of words that we're using or that we read, to grow in our knowledge of those ideas that can shape the world.

Mother Teresa liked to say that the greatest poverty in the world is ignorance. It’s a very interesting statement coming from Mother Teresa.

You could say that one of the goals of Christianity, and of the Catholic Church in particular, is to combat ignorance in the world through the social doctrine of the Church, the incredible body of ideas which has been the basis for the whole educational thrust of the Church in so many countries, and not just of education, but of standards in education which have changed the panorama very dramatically.

God has called us to be those people that spread those ideas. There's a need for an intense, deep, and adequate preparation. We cannot give what we do not have.

If we don't make a serious preparation, then we won't be able to make a serious contribution. God may bring souls close to us who precisely are hungry to hear those ideas or that truth.

Our knowledge of doctrine in particular helps us to be more pious. St. Josemaría used to say, “Ours should be the piety of children and the…doctrine of theologians” (Josemaría Escrivá, Christ Is Passing By, Point 10).

We could try to love the Catechism. Read it from time to time or get through it slowly. Little nuggets, little by little, so that we can transmit them to other people and know the ideas clearer.

If we're to grow in our spirit and habit of studying, we need to organize ourselves a little bit. Make up a schedule: a time when I'm going to sit down and read this particular thing or study this particular topic. It needs to be ordered there, av starting time and a finishing time.

It can be good to challenge ourselves with what we have learned in the last few pages, so that we're not daydreaming, or we're not fooling ourselves that we're getting through a book or through pages, and things are going in one ear and out the other.

I heard a priest say once that we have to study until our brains are out on the floor. I found that a very graphic example. Study until our brains are out on the floor.

If we're to be good students, we should try and offer our study to God at the beginning, at the end. And in between, when we remember.

Try to make good use of our time. Keep good notes. Make an effort to memorize certain things. Find time for this important activity, so that we can improve what we're transmitting. It needs to be constant.

Sometimes we need to study things that we don't particularly like or don't find attractive. We have to conquer ourselves. It needs fortitude and daring.

You've got to go to the crux of the matter. Avoid superficiality. Make sure our knowledge is accurate, so that we don't just have a goal to pass exams, but rather to form and train ourselves professionally well.

Somebody defined professionalism once as “doing our best job irrespective of how we're feeling.”

It may be that we never really feel like studying, but we have to try and offer that cross to Our Lord and apply ourselves seriously, because we need that intellectual and cultural formation to achieve our end.

Constancy, order, intensity. It's good to have ideals in our study.

I want to be somebody, not just because of me, but to be a better instrument of God, so that when I open my mouth, hopefully people will listen because they realize I talk sense, or I know what I'm talking about; so that I can have an influence.

Christ wanted the apostles to have an influence. “Go ye therefore, and teach all nations…” (Matt. 28:19).

Therefore, we have to know our stuff in order to give God glory in the things we do.

While we try to spend time studying, we also have to try and make time for our spiritual life. The spiritual life comes first: our spiritual reading, our prayer.

We don't delay these things or put them off because ‘I have to study.’ We make these things compatible. There are a lot of challenges that come with this.

We can ask Our Lord to help us to take advantage of all the opportunities that we have to study: perhaps doing first what may be most difficult; using little pieces of time, the five minutes here, the ten minutes there; realizing that in all situations there are things that I can learn.

St. Josemaría says in the Furrow that wise people realize there's always something new to learn. “If they didn't, they would cease to be wise” (J. Escrivá, Furrow, Point 272).

He says in The Way, “If you are to serve God with your mind, to study is a grave obligation for you” (J. Escrivá, The Way, Point 336).

It may be that we don't see it as too much of a grave obligation. Maybe God sees it that way. There are certain things we're supposed to know, we're supposed to learn, to be good at.

Even if we are not naturally inclined in that direction, we can learn. The good student is not somebody who's born that way, but very often, it's a habit that's acquired because of that quest for knowledge.

Come to love our study. Love those opportunities. Acquire all the knowledge and wisdom that other people have attained or gone before us.

“Try to live in such a way,” he says in The Way, “that you can deprive yourself voluntarily of the comfort and ease you wouldn't like to see in the life of another person of God. Remember that you are the grain of wheat the Gospel speaks of. If you don't bury yourself and die, there will be no harvest” (J. Escrivá, The Way, Point 938).

One of the areas that we have to try and tackle is to keep abreast of current issues; to know what's going on in the world, because people may need Christian answers to those particular problems, or to see things from a Christian perspective.

That means we have to read, to attend conferences, to ask questions, to keep our minds active.

“The enemies of Jesus,” we’re told in The Forge, “and even some who call themselves his friends, come decked out in the armor of human knowledge and wielding the sword of power. They laugh at us Christians, just as the Philistines laughed at David and despised him.

“In our own days too, the Goliath of hatred, the Goliath of falsehood, of dominating power, of secularism and indifferentism, will also come crashing to the ground.

“And then, once the giant of those false ideologies has been struck down by the apparently feeble weapons of the Christian spirit—prayer, expiation, and action—we shall strip him of his armor of erroneous doctrines, equipping our fellow men instead with true knowledge, with Christian culture, and the Christian way of life” (J. Escrivá, The Forge, Point 974).

“Study,” he says, “study in earnest. If you are to be salt and light, you need knowledge, ability. Or do you imagine that an idle and lazy life will entitle you to receive infused knowledge?” (J. Escrivá, The Way, Point 340).

“An hour of study,” he said, “for a modern apostle, is an hour of prayer” (J. Escrivá, The Way, Point 335).

If we all knew the ideas a little better than we're supposed to know, maybe we'd give better service.

A professor told me once how he went to a university with a Catholic ethos and asked the students there, Why were they at this university?

They said, We're here to get a good degree, so we can get a good job, so we can get a good salary.

He wasn't very happy with that answer. So then he went to a school with a Catholic ethos. He asked the students in the latter years of secondary school, Why were they in this school with a Catholic ethos?

They said, We're here to get a good final result in our end-of-the-year exams, so we can get into a good university, so that we can get a good job, so we can get a good salary.

It was the same answer. He said that represents the failure of Catholic education, because the purpose of education is to serve, because “Christ came not to be served, but to serve” (Matt. 20:28).

As followers of Christ, we're all called to serve, and to serve Him also with our mind, which takes preparation. To know how to get certain messages across. Keep our mind open to be always ready to learn from different people we may meet.

Every person has a little piece of wisdom to teach us. They have their experience, their experience of life, all sorts of things that have taken place.

“Put on the full armor of God,” said St. Paul to the Ephesians, “so that you can take your stand against the devil's schemes. For our struggle is not against flesh and blood, but against the rulers, against the authorities, against the powers of this dark world, and against the spiritual forces of evil in the heavenly realms” (Eph. 6:11-12).

We're told in Scripture that “Our Lady kept in mind all these things carefully in her heart” (cf. Luke 2:19,51).

The things that Our Lady heard didn't just go in one ear and out the other. She was throwing them around in her mind, going deeper into these mysteries, in these communications. She was to know them better. She was to live better. It was an ongoing process.

We could ask Our Lady that we also might store carefully all those ideas in our mind, throwing them around the place, that we may grow to a deeper knowledge, a deeper competence, and therefore a deeper service where God has called us to serve.

I thank you, my God, for the good resolutions, affections, and inspirations that you have communicated to me during this meditation. I ask your help to put them into practice. My Immaculate Mother, Saint Joseph, my father and lord, my guardian angel, intercede for me.

In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.

EW