This is not just the concern for priests and all those who occupy positions of leadership and influence-teachers, media people, politicians, etc. This is a universal concern.

In the first place, all of us are meant for this activity. We are precisely endowed with intelligence and will and other faculties like memory, imagination, self-expression, etc., precisely because we need to study and take care of our endless formation in life.

We just have to help one another to achieve this goal. Ideally, each one should be responsible. But real life conditions clearly show that this is not so. We have to make that ideal happen with the concerted efforts of everyone, each in the way he can contribute.

Study enables us to penetrate into the essence of things, to discover the relations that exist among them, to understand what are the causes and what are the corresponding effects, etc. It takes us away from a life merely dependent on appearances and external things.

Study makes us get in touch with reality in a better way. It enables us to grapple with our life's challenges more effectively. It empowers us to grow as a person, skilful in developing our relations with the others and ultimately with God.

Our big problem these days is that the interest to study is waning in many people. If there ever is such interest, it is most likely pursued in a skewed way, considering the confusion around us now.

Many parents, for example, are complaining that their children are not studying anymore, or are studying less. Instead, there seems to be a great incidence of activities that are actually distractions.

People complain more and more of a certain type of obsessions and addictions that are afflicting many youngsters. Someone said a student of his watched 21 movies over the weekend. He hardly goes out of the house.

Another one said his teener is hooked to the internet up to the wee hours of the morning. It's not just games that he and his friends do. The parents are afraid they're getting into porno and other dangerous things.

I'm no psychologist nor sociologist, but I strongly think that these data just tell us there's something gravely wrong in our world today.

This is a complicated challenge that we have to face. We cannot be naïve and simplistic in our approach. We have to exercise extreme prudence as we sort out things and come up with some strategies and plans of action.

Just the same, that prudence always has to be accompanied with decisive and timely actions. While we have to have patience and certain level of tolerance, we also need to be strong and forthright in giving guidance especially to the young ones.

Everyone should do his part to help in solving this problem which is like a creeping sickness that is affecting all of us. We seem to have lost our proper orientation. Our North Star is not God anymore. We are being seduced by another idol.

Thus, the need to study and to take care of a lifelong formation cannot be neglected.

In this regard, we have to give due importance to the doctrines that come from God and are now taught by the Church.

We have to understand that these doctrines contain the ultimate truths about us and the world. We can never set them aside, even if for a moment they may seem to be too mysterious for us to handle.

Our problem is that we seem to be so addicted to a practical mentality and to expecting quick and easy results that we immediately neglect or marginalize the doctrines of our faith when they appear to be mysterious.

What we have to do is precisely to study the doctrine more and undertake a more serious and systematic approach to our formation so that we can immediately see the connection between our faith and the many things in our life.

Otherwise, we can easily be deceived, as St. Paul once warned us, like "children tossed to and from, and carried about with every wind of doctrine by the wickedness of men, by cunning craftiness, by which they lie in wait to deceive." (Eph 4,14)

We should never underestimate the importance and the power of the doctrine, freely given and taught to us, to attain our true joy and peace.

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Fr. Roy Cimagala is the Chaplain of Center for Industrial Technology and Enterprise (CITE) in Talamban, Cebu City. You can email him at:Email: roycimagala@boholchronicle.com