Fourth Sunday after Easter
We use phrases like, “live your truth.” We have media outlets of all kinds, conservative and liberal, who twist the truth to promote their agendas. We have fact checkers, which would seem to be a good thing, except they, too, consider facts from a particular perspective, and their results do not always ring true. Those who have great power or great prestige often say one thing, but then do not live up to what they say, or live in a way contradictory to it. We even have leaders of the Church who openly posit teachings which the Church has taught is wrong and contrary to what our Lord revealed. In the midst of all this, is it any wonder that people doubt if there is truth, or find themselves asking the same question as the governor of Judea: what is truth?
Our Lord today tells us that He will send us the Spirit of truth, who will lead us into all truth. The Savior doesn’t modify the truth, or say that He will help us to know our truth. The Holy Spirit will teach us the truth. Truth, by definition, is one, like God. It does not admit of variations, even though people may have different perceptions of it. There was a picture floating around Facebook a while back, and I suppose, in the best light, it was trying to help us look at things from another perspective. It showed a number on the sidewalk in chalk, and two people arguing about whether it was the number 6 or the number 9. But, as one commenter pointed out, someone put the number on the sidewalk, and intended it to be a 6 or a 9. So even with perspective, there is still an objective truth, a reality to which the image refers.
And truth cannot change based upon the time in which one lives. Our understanding can certainly grow and develop, but the truth is eternal, again, like God. It’s not as if the world was flat at one time, until we started to learn more about the earth and the solar system, and then it became spherical. It was always spherical; we just thought, from our base of knowledge, that it was flat. Or, to use an item of faith, it’s not as if God was a monad until the New Testament, and then He became a Trinity. God was always a Trinity of Persons, but we didn’t fully understand that until our Lord revealed it to us.
To live a successful life, we have to acknowledge the truth. Otherwise, truth will exert itself in painful ways, no matter how much we try to ignore it. I do not have to believe in gravity, but if I try to ignore it while walking off the roof of a building, gravity will impress upon me that it exists whether I want it to or not. And, depending on the size of the building, my desire that gravity not exist may prove fatal. I may want to walk through walls, but if I try, I will end up getting a serious headache and body ache.
The same is true with the truth about how God made the world when it comes to religion. Just because we do not want something to be true, does not make it less true. A person who does not believe in God will come face to face with that false opinion when he or she stands before God in judgement. A person may convince him or herself that saying God’s name in vain doesn’t really matter, but at some point he or she will recognize the truth of the pain that the violation of that commandment brings. Yes, our ability to know that truth, whether our ignorance was vincible or invincible, conquerable or unconquerable, will affect God’s judgement of us. But the reality will impress itself upon us, and perhaps cause us a longer time in Purgatory, or perhaps even mean our eternal damnation.
On a much happier note, we have children today who are making their first Holy Communion. They are receiving our Lord in the Eucharist for the first time. They have come to recognize that what looks like bread and wine is not bread and wine, but has become, through the power of the Holy Spirit and the ministry of the priest, the Body and Blood of Christ. You, my dear children, fulfill today the words of Psalm 8: “on the lips of children and of babes / you have found praise to foil your enemy, / to silence the foe and the rebel.” Though there is still a lot of truth you need to learn, you have come to understand the truth that our Eucharistic Lord gives Himself to us at each Mass so that we can eat His flesh and have life within us, even though it looks like ordinary bread.
And the way that you receive, kneeling and on your tongue, helps to demonstrate the truth that you have come to learn. If it were only a matter of eating regular food, we would pull up a table and chairs and have you eat like normal. But because Christ gives Himself to us, we kneel down in adoration, and allow Him to nourish us, like a baby bird receives its nourishment from its parent in its mouth. In some ways, children, you are wiser than some adults, and know a truth that they have rejected. Hold on to that truth. Never doubt what Christ has taught us through the Scriptures and through the Church, that if we wish to have eternal life within us, we need to eat His flesh, which is the Eucharist.
And for all of us, pray that the Holy Spirit will guide us all into the fullness of truth. Not just the opinions that we like or that seem easy for us; not just the soundbites that support our pre-conceived notions; but the truth, the reality of how God has made the world. There is real truth, because God exists who can ground the truth in Himself. Our goal, aided by the light of the Holy Spirit, is to acknowledge the truth and live according to it, the truth that grounds itself in our Triune God: Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. Amen.
