Piety and doctrine

By Fr. Roy Cimagala

THESE two should go together if we want to have a healthy and working spiritual life, full of energy to love God and neighbor at the same time. One without the other can only go so far, and in fact creates a condition where we become vulnerable to all sorts of spiritual anomalies.

When there is genuine piety, there is also a deep and personal relationship with God that is nourished through regular prayer, worship and devotion. We can notice a spiritual growth that is sustained by meditation, reflection and self-examination. Virtues would just come about since we would be inspired to follow the example of Christ.

But to have solid doctrine is also important, since it provides us with a solid foundation for understanding God’s revelation and the teachings of the Church. It guides our spiritual growth by offering us a way to understand more and more the mysteries of our Christian faith. It helps us to make sound moral decisions in a way that would lead us to live according to God’s will.

These two components of our spiritual life should be pursued without let-up, especially these days when we are faced with more complicated and tricky conditions and challenges. While doctrine can provide us with a moral framework for decision-making, piety fosters a deep sense of reverence and connection with God, guiding us to make choices according to God’s will and ways.

When we give due attention to these two components of our spiritual life, we would be in a much better position to effectively address today’s social issues. The pursuit of a more just and equitable society becomes more doable and realistic.

We just have to make sure that our piety and our devotion to God and everything related to him has to involve both the body and soul. It has to involve our whole person. It just cannot be purely spiritual or purely material. It just cannot be only a matter of knowing the doctrine, quite cerebral in approach, without some external manifestations, or of practicing all sorts of devotional exercises, without knowing the doctrine of faith.

If piety has to be authentic and consistent in all circumstances, then it has to be lived both in our spiritual soul whose main faculties are our intellect and will, and in our material body whose link to our soul, the principle of life, are the emotions and passions, the memory and the imagination, our temperament and psychological state, etc.

When piety is limited to one or the other essential element of our being, to either our spiritual soul or the material body, then it cannot be consistent. It cannot hold out against that anomaly for long. It sooner or later will fall into the tricks of hypocrisy and self-deception.

We also need to see the Church doctrine as the proper spirit that should animate any human doctrine we may make for some practical purpose we may have in the different aspects of our life—personal, family, professional, social, political, etc.

Thus, it is essential that we learn to know the Church doctrine or the doctrine of our faith such that this doctrine becomes the moving spirit behind our every thought, word and deed, behind our every plan and project, big or small, ordinary or extraordinary.

There is need for us to know how to relate the doctrine of our faith to our daily affairs and to our very serious and big projects and plans, and vice versa. At the moment, this expertise is hardly known, its need hardly felt.

This is the challenge we are facing today as we tackle the increasingly rapid, complex and complicated developments.

Email: roycimagala@gmail.com