On The "Great Crime" of the Gentiles | Fr. James V. Schall, S.J. | September 25, 2009 | Ignatius Insight
"Do not be surprised, brothers, that Mary is said to be a martyr in spirit. Let him be surprised who does not remember the words of Paul, that one of the greatest crimes of the Gentiles was that they were without love." -- Bernard of Clairvaux, d. 1153, Sermon, Feast of the Assumption.
"This is the great hope we are left with: we cannot find the Truth on our own, but the Truth, who is a Person, finds us." -- Benedict XVI, At the screening of a film on St. Augustine, 2009. [1]
I.
We might describe mankind over time as a body of truth-seekers who have not found the truth, or at least not all of it, or not yet. Implicit in that description can be the assumption we can find what we set out to find all by ourselves. That is, not a few people would evidently reject truth if they did not themselves "make" it. The idea that truth might be given to them and require honest acknowledgement strikes at the very foundation of much ancient and modern thought.
Still, the very fact we do seek to know the truth means that already something in us urges us to do so. Even when he holds that there is no truth, no man is comfortable with the proposition: "I do not seek truth." We have the power to recognize truth at least when we find it. No one wants to establish his dignity on the basis of his principled rejection of any truth. He must at least cling to the contradictory proposition, "It is true that there is no truth."
Benedict XVI would perhaps modify that last statement about recognizing truth by saying we have the power to know the Truth when it "finds us." We often assume "truth" is a kind of inert thing just sitting out there waiting to be found. And some of it is, no doubt. Yet, if Truth is a Person, there is the possibility of that Person finding us. We also recognize that the dynamics of accepting truth involve what can only be called a personal relationship, which we can accept or reject for any number of reasons. As the New Testament records, several of those who saw the Truth either went away sad or went out to kill He who proclaimed it.
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My Calvinist tainting makes me want to add that while we seek truth, we also run from it, and need the shove from grace to embrace it. We're both recruits-in-waiting AND rebels, much like was Francis Xavier prior his conversion. And of course the mystery is why does Truth "find" so visibly and thoroughly "find" some, while others seem to either remain so far from or so resistant to it.
Posted by: joe | Friday, September 25, 2009 at 08:03 AM