Total effort
AS one of the more popular promoters of management leadership recently said: In the Serengeti Reserve every morning a young lion wakes up and knows that if he cannot run faster than the slowest gazelle he will have no meal for the day. So also the weakest gazelle knows he must run faster than the lions, otherwise he would not live another day. He said business is like the situation in Serengeti where speed and total effort are essential. Also war is detrimental to everybody. However, in the war effort, the best is elicited from everybody. Unbelievable effort is produced to make the impossible almost possible. In the first commandment, Moses ordered and encouraged us to love God with all our heart, with all our soul, with all our strength. It should be total effort in the love of God. St. Ignatius used AMDG – “Ad Majorem Dei Gloriam” for the greater glory of God. Glory in our age is better understood as pleasing or trying to please God with total effort. It also helps when we are not sure what will be more pleasing to God, we choose that which we think is more pleasing to God. Thoroughness seems the requisite for success in life.
In this business of success whether in earthly endeavors or in the spiritual life, we have to define our goals and break them down to subsidiary goals. It cannot be left as a general wish to get to heaven nor can it be left at wanting to be rich. As a generality, that would be fine. But it will not get us anywhere. We need to specify how we want to praise and thank God or how much money we want to have gathered by a certain time. I want to have ten million pesos by 2022. We may also want to praise God and serve the neighbor with all my strength the next five years. This is still vague and difficult to implement. Something like “I will help 100 people out of poverty in the next five years would be more concrete. Praising God can be more concrete if we say that I will pray a rosary every day for the next two years. We have set three goals: To love God with total dedication; to serve the neighbor; and then get rich.
To love God is defined by the Ten Commandments given through Moses but we need five other missiles – to pray the rosary every day, to go to Mass, to read the Bible, to fast, and to go to the sacrament of confession. To love my neighbor means to go out of my way to help those whom we meet in everyday life. To be rich is to gather enough to allow me and my family in ordinary comfort. This may be to earn another extra ten thousand pesos a month. But to also remember that riches in this world are only lent to us by God. We do not own our riches. They are only lent to us by God to help our neighbor. But we need to specify it: I want another ten thousand pesos a month. And we are on our way.
Next we have to check every day how we are doing in our pursuit of our goals. And we need to write it down. If we do not write it down, it will vanish. St. Ignatius of Loyola jotted down a number in his progress towards his goals. He did this till the day of his death. Without jotting it down, it becomes just a wish. If we must be successful in our spiritual life and in our economic life we need a daily accounting that is written down.