Dear Adrienne and Lance,

Since being struck Catholic a few years ago, I've done lots of reading about my faith. That's because I hunger to understand our beliefs. And, like most every human being in history, I have a smoldering desire to find and comprehend the truth.

For Catholics, there is no shortage of reading material that can help you understand our religion, interpret biblical writings and learn how to live a Christian life. People like John Paul II, Fulton Sheen, Thomas Aquinas and Augustine wrote tens of thousands of pages of spiritual wisdom. It will take me a lifetime to read what each of them wrote, so I have trouble understanding how they wrote this stuff in a lifetime.

Assuming I accomplish this task, I expect I'll still have a lot to learn. So, I've often wished it could all be reduced to a simple formula: X + Y = Salvation.

Oh, I know. There is the golden rule, the admonition to love God, the Ten Commandments — all very helpful. Of course, there also is the ever-popular What Would Jesus Do? (WWJD?), which you can get on hats, T-shirts, buttons and temporary tattoos.

A priest friend (who humbly requests anonymity) tells me that when we ask WWJD? we are asking the wrong question. He suggests we should be constantly asking ourselves what we can do for Jesus. And from that simple question, he has crafted the secret formula for us to use if we want to live a life of service to Christ and His Church:

O + E + _DS^PI = S

In case it isn't immediately evident what these letters mean, here it is in English: Organization + Efficiency + the drive for Success, tempered by purity of intention = sanctity.

There you have it — everything you need to know about personal sanctification reduced to a simple formula that would fit on a couple lines of an index card. For people like me who work for the Church, having such a formula is reassuring. If I can just keep the formula in mind when I'm doing my daily work and interacting with other people, my chances for eternal salvation rise geometrically.

Notice, however, that I suggest the formula is simple — which is different from easy. In fact, some very simple things are very difficult to accomplish. For example, I know the formula for running a four-minute mile. The formula for that is simple: Just run four consecutive quarter miles in a minute or less. Simple, but not easy.

Notice, too, that I referred to my priest friend's formula as “secret.” Obviously, it can't be secret in the conventional sense of being unknown or undisclosed, since I've published it in this newspaper.

However, the formula remains an apparent secret because few people are using it. An even smaller subset of people is using it effectively. Sadly, knowledge of the truth is not enough; you have to do something about it, to take action.

There are big rewards for action — happiness, eternal salvation, never-ending life, meeting Christ face-to-face, a place in heaven. Those are Christ's rewards.

Yet our culture tells us to use a different formula. One we see presented in various forms on television, in advertising and in movies: “He who dies with the most toys wins.”

Many people are living by this formula. That's sad. We need to pray for them — that they will turn their hearts from transient treasures on earth to eternal treasures in heaven (see Matthew 6:19-21).

Jim Fair writes from Chicago.