The Difference between Knowing and Doing

Boiled down to its bare bones, today’s reading from the Letter to the Romans can be stated thusly: It is part of the human situation that we know the right and yet do the wrong, that we are never as good as we know we ought to be.  At one and the same time we are haunted by goodness and haunted by sin.

William Barclay, a Scottish Scripture scholar wrote that this passage might be called a demonstration of inadequacies.

1.       It demonstrates the inadequacy of human knowledge.  If to know the right thing was to do the right thing, life would be easy.  Knowledge by itself does not make a person good.  It is the same in every walk of life.  We may know exactly how to shoot a basketball, but that is very far from being able to play the game.  We may know how poetry ought to be written but that is very far from being able to write it.  We may know how we ought to behave in any given situation but that is very far from being able so to behave.

2.       It demonstrates the inadequacy of human resolution.  To resolve to do a thing is very far from doing it.  There is in human nature an essential weakness of will.  Think of St. Peter who declared, “Even though I should have to die with you, I will not deny you”; and yet he failed badly when it came to acting on his resolution.

3.       Finally, it demonstrates the inadequacy of diagnosis.  Paul knew quite clearly what was wrong, but he was unable to put it right.  He was like a doctor who could accurately diagnose a disease but is powerless to prescribe a cure.

Jesus is the one person who not only knows what is wrong, but who can also put the wrong to rights.  He is also the one who offers to help us rather than to criticize us for our inadequacy.  This is why we call him a divine physician, but he cures all our weaknesses and heals all our wounds.  Blessed are we to receive him in our daily Eucharist.

Fr. Lawrence Jagdfeld, O.F.M., Administrator