What is truth?
May 1, 2008 3:39 pm
At Jesus’ hearing before Pontius Pilot, Pilot asks Jesus a simple, but profoundly significant question: Quid est veritas? What is truth? This is a question I have struggled to merely understand, lest attempt to answer. This is a question that has always been scratching at me from within; even in the times it seemingly is farthest from my mind, it remains, quietly reminding me I cannot ignore exploring this forever. What started as a whisper in high school got magnified in college and near the end of my undergrad, the whisper had become screaming. What is truth?
Saint Augustine once remarked: “We were made, O Lord, for Thee, and our heart is restless until it finds peace in Thee.” This is the truth I have come to know. The Spirit of truth Christ refers to is always with us, but at times, its whispers are not always heard through the distractions and volume of our lives. This is the real tragedy of my generation. Christ’s tells us that the Spirit guides us to truth and yet most of us spend less time praying, consciously trying to cultivate an ear for the spirits will, than we do surfing the internet or watching TV. Many of us have lost touch with the spirit and as a result we are without our guide and this is something which is becoming more and more apparent with youth today. There is a curiosity about truth, but a lack of clarity as to where to seek it out or more dangerously, a relativism that says the truth of one, is not necessarily true of us all. It took me a long time to accept that genuine truth is not something reserved or available only to a chosen few, but is universal and accessible to all, if there be the will to seek after it.
The Spirit of truth is with us and we must all do our part to ensure we are attentive to it. I believe when we are in relationship with the Spirit, the truth will begin to be made apparent to us and in this we will experience the peace we all seek. What than remains for us to do is to share that peace with someone else. We must all ask ourselves what we are doing in our own lives, in our relationships with our loved ones, with our co-workers, with society at large, to heighten this attentiveness to the Spirit of truth. A good start may be as simple as spending more time alone as well as with family and friends in prayer, but the how is something we all must discern for ourselves. The why is what is true for us all: “that our heart is restless, until it finds peace in Thee.” Let this be the truth that drives us.
Pax Vobiscum,
Matt
When I told people that I was going to be entering seminary, people were mostly supportive but one or two people asked me if I was still going to do film. The funny thing about entering religious life is that it has made me
The presentation will feature head shots of all of the Paulists who have passed, so I have been spending the last four days (before classes begin) pouring through our archives looking for photos to include in the video, and it has been an incredible look through history. The first photos I started scanning in (see above) were from the late 1800s, head shots that are printed on credit card sized cardboard. When I first saw them I thought they were baseball cards… I can imagine various religious of the day making trades while chewing bubble gum. (”I’ll trade you three Adrian Rosencrans for one Walter Elliot!”)
Even after having lived this life for eighteen months already, I still have to remind myself that everyone who has walked through these doors are just regular people. That was brought home to me when I got to the folder labeled Henry Ignatius Stark, who was a former superior of the community during World War 2. When scanning in his photos, he looked like a great guy to be around, and from many of them you would never even know he was a priest much less a superior. It gave me some solace as I continue through this process while trying to simultaneously grow into a better person while keeping myself intact.
