“Knowledge is power.”

Father John Main tells about going to the school of Oriental and African Studies in London and seeing in large letters: knowledge is power and being horrified by this sign.

The other night on the Lehrer report there was a section on giving children money rewards for passing to let them know that getting money and more of it wil be the fruit of doing well in school. And we we believe that the movers and shakers of this world are those with knowledge. Well, I certainly wanted to be able to earn a living and that was why I wanted to go into nurses’ training. And it is true that good education usually bears fruit in the power of a good job. But we also have to ask ourselves whether that is the main goal of human life.

In the Baltimore Catechism I learned as a child that the goal of life was to know love and serve God in this life and be happy with Him forever in heaven. And then we hear St.Paul telling us: Let this mind be in you which was also in Christ Jesus, who, though he was in the form of God, did not regard equality with God
as something to be exploited,
but emptied himself, taking the form of a slave,
being born in human likeness. And being found in human form,
he humbled himself and became obedient to the point of death—
even death on a cross.

Therefore God also highly exalted him
and gave him the name that is above every name,
so that at the name of Jesus every knee should bend,
in heaven and on earth and under the earth,
and every tongue should confess that Jesus Christ is Lord,
to the glory of God the Father. (Phil 2:

And Jesus saying: Learn from me for I am meek and humble of heart and you will find rest for you souls.

Blessed are the poor in spirit. The Divine Energy or power that God wills for us has nothing to do with power over, or control of others or of situations. it has to do with the power to love. It has to do with loving relationships. It has nothing to do with getting even, retaliating. And yet so prevalent is the belief that knowledge is power that we have trouble discerning what is unchristian or worldly from the way of the Lord.

For me that is a good reason to meditate. We let God decide what to do for us. We entrust our lives to God We come before him without an agenda except to be with him as attentively as we are able. We choose a prayer word (maranatha or other), we make an act of faith in the reality of God with us and we gently repeat that word for 20 minutes, coming back to it whenever we realize we have other thoughts or even when we realize silence. In this way, we let God empty us of our false self, our ego that needs the power to control others or situations. We let God free us to love.