By Fr. Eugene Hemrick
Yeshua Institute Fellow
To experience the truth these days is becoming a mammoth task. The smallest things tend to hide it and idiotic people are forever exploiting it.
We have entered an age in which it is difficult to know what or who is truthful. When truthfulness goes by the wayside so does veracity, sincerity, authenticity, credibility, trustworthiness, reality and frankness.
It is a fact that the best way to destroy a nation is not by weapons of war but by spreading distrustfulness among its citizens.
Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn points us to one way to counter this malaise. “The simple step of the courageous individual is to not take part in the lie.” Here Solzhenitsyn reminds us truthfulness begins at home with our wives, husbands, children, neighbors and fellow workers, to shut the door on untruthfulness in those environments.
Examples of dishonesty and outright lying are now flooding our media and news outlets, conditioning us to get used to it. Why this onslaught on truth? How has it come to be?
Plato’s answer
Plato gives us one answer in stating, “The true lover of knowledge strives for truth, and he is not content with common opinion, but sores with undiminished, and unwearied, passion, till he grasps the essential nature of things.”
Plato points us to the essential foundations of truth -- one being a lover. St. Thomas Aquinas helps us better understand what being a lover entails. It is desiring to bring about peace, joy, benevolence and mercy; it is selflessness for the good of the common good.
Being a peacemaker implies a desire to create order, unity, and the joy it creates. Mercy, misericordia, contains the Latin word cor -- meaning heart; to possess a compassionate heart toward another and benevolence is the practice of generosity.
Precious ideal
Truthfulness is a precious ideal and like so many beautiful ideals requires an unwearied, undiminished passion and love for getting at the essence of what is the truth. It demands labor, reverence, and respect.
It is unfortunate in our times that we experience truth callously kicked around, twisted and ignored. Equally unfortunate are misled people devoid of the moral compass needed to embrace honesty.
William Shakespeare once observed, “Knowledge maketh a bloody entrance.” We can add, “Truth teaches reality and requires integrity. Sadly some would rather put their heads in the sand and deprive themselves of the soothing waves of the sea, majestically crashing against the shore.”