There can be a tension between our spiritual life and our active life. This is why we are often tempted to choose one over the other. This choice is visible in many different ways: working overtime at the cost of going to church, become obsessed with health and neglect prayer life, invest in family relationships and assume that God does not need our attention, etc. All of these ways of choosing the active world over the contemplative or spiritual world are a real temptation in our lives. For those who are already quite active in their churches this imbalance can be manifested in feeding the hungry, fixing the broken churches, teaching the uneducated – or in other words doing the work of Jesus – while at the same time neglecting our own relationship with Him. Another way of looking at it is “doing things for Jesus while at the same time neglecting Jesus”. When our active life becomes separated from a healthy spiritual life we will notice a slow but real increase in dissatisfaction with what we are doing. Even when the very things we are involved in are good in themselves and helpful to others, and maybe even to the Church. Without a healthy foundation of a prayer life our activity can quickly become meaningless, or simply not satisfactory. If I could give only one piece of advice to someone who is looking for meaning in life it would be to invest in your spiritual life. The simplest way to do this is by reading and praying. Read – here I’m speaking of spiritual reading, choosing to read uplifting books on Jesus and the saints, and by Jesus (Bible) and the saints. To pray is simply to spend time each day feeding your soul with the presence of God. The busier we are the more we need to support our busyness with the spiritual.
Fr. Wojtek Kuzma