It is often said that the most ignorant person on earth is not the one who does not know but the one who refuses to know. Knowing is, in fact, an essential aspect of what makes a human person human. Without knowing there is no appreciation, awareness and reassurance for growth.

Sometimes you talk to certain people and get the impression that they know it all. But, as life experiences show all the time, by doing so these people have not only messed up their own lives but also the lives of the innocent folk who had the misfortune to meet them along the way.

Real knowing makes the knower aware of his or her own limits. It wipes out any sign of presumption, let alone arrogance! Knowing drives the person to search, inquire and test what she or he already knows. Obviously, knowing is a key to inter-personal relationships. The more a person gets to know the other significant person to him or her, the more he or she tries to respect and value that significant person.

Knowledge is also a privileged way of entering into a deeper communion with God. In fact, for the author of the Book of Wisdom, knowledge of God makes one more accountable to him. “For even if we sin we are thine, knowing thy power; but we will not sin, because we know that we are accounted thine” (Wis. 15,2).

So let us inquire, search and test what we learn. The only real assurance that genuine knowledge can give us as human beings is that of making us more humble and down-to-earth, in our constant attempt to live an authentic Christian and human life.

Fr Mario Attard

OFM Cap

San Gwann