Window to Truth

A transcription of a speech delivered by Father Pablo Straub, C.Ss.R.,to the Immaculate Heart of Mary National Home School and Parenting Conference, 2004.

Here we are, not by coincidence, from many, many different places --not by coincidence-- we were brought here by God for His Holy and Happy Purposes. Here we are. In the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.

What is truth? What …is…truth?

We repeat the title of this meditation with respect, in awe. We repeat it as a prayer: “Jesus, teach us the truth.”

What is truth? The question, in fact, just as you heard it, came out of the cynical mouth of a cynical man. You may recall that question. I’ll say something about the cynical man in just a second. But what appears in the Word of God coming out of the mouth of a cynical man: “What is truth?” We ask that question now in awe, with reverence. I even dare say, seeking Him whom we adore: what is truth?

Now the cynical man: Pontius Pilate. You ask yourself why does the Word of God include such a sickly question in the mouth of a man who is about to kill the author of Life? Pontius Pilate. The day during the hours of the judgment of Jesus that Good Friday,
Pontius Pilate was receiving messages from messengers frequently. His wife sent word, “Don’t have anything to do against this holy man, I had a dream about him last night, don’t have anything to do against him.” And Pilate, cowardly, just got more and more scared. He knew this man was innocent --utterly different-- but innocent.

And Jesus said, This is why I came into the world: to bear witness to the truth.

Apparently, a couple of seconds before Jesus came to the end of that sentence somebody was calling Pilate off to the wings, I suppose with another message, and then he apparently tosses over his shoulder the sickly question that we are talking about: “Truth, what’s that?”

What is truth? Truth, what’s that?

I want to do a snapshot or two now of children. Don’t they from around the age of maybe 30 months, maybe before, just keep asking “why? why?” It’s good that they have that word in their mouth.  Because that question “why” is a sign that the child has an immortal soul. The human creature is the only creature on the face of the earth…that is to say, in all of physical creation…angels of course are non-physical creation…in all of physical creation the human being is the only being that forms the word, “Why?” That wants to know “Why?”

In fact, isn’t it true, that children jump to a universal? A child wants a universal principle that explains every detail he sees.

I remember my nieces and nephews used to call me Uncle Father Paul, Uncle Father Pablo. And Uncle Father Pablo meant this: the black clothes, the big rosary. The rosary then only had 15 decades --as soon as the Pope talked of another five we added five – twenty-decade rosary. But to my nephews and nieces “Uncle Father Paul” meant a big big man
--I’m not so big but you always look big to a small child—with this long black thing on and a big black rosary. And one day they drove up to the seminary where there were a hundred of us or more, and as the car drove up one of the little nephews or nieces I forget which, said, “Look at all the Uncle Father Pauls.”

Now all the really cute and funny things that children say-- just analyze it-- come from their seeing a detail and wanting to find the universal principle. What’s an “Uncle Father Paul”? It’s someone in a long black thing with a big big rosary. So we see a whole bunch of people wearing a long black thing and a big black rosary, well, don’t they all have to be, by logic, “Uncle Father Pauls”?

And just analyze it—all the really funny things that children say come from universalizing…. like a baby will universalize that mothers breast feed, right?… And then the first time a little child sees a mother pop a bottle out of a bag and put it in a baby’s mouth --I know of one case where a little three-year-old girl saw that for the first time-- the lady who popped the bottle out and put it in her baby’s mouth was a doctor…and when the doctor who was a friend of this little three-year-old’s mom went home...it was just a little visit of friends…the little three-year-old said, “Mom, I guess lady doctors don’t breast feed.”

In other words, universal principle: mothers breast feed. Why would this mother not breast feed? She’s a doctor. So the child jumps to a universal exception: if you’re a doctor, you don’t breast feed. Which of course is very funny.

See, it’s an evidence of the hunger of the human mind to come in every line of thought to universal principles. You can see it --well, I don’t know exactly what age, I’m going to say about 30 months, but you who bring up children may know the dawn of that “why” might come much younger, maybe as young as 20 months, I don’t know-- but you see it, the hunger, in the human being, to know truth.

Now where does it come from? When God had made on the face of the earth everything except us …Genesis says about all the other things, except us: and God saw that it was good. But after He made us, Genesis says: God saw that it was very good. That’s not said about anything else. Only about us.

But let us go back to before God made us. Let us make man in our image. Let the likeness go for just a second. The likeness we’ll just set aside for a moment, and then we’ll come back to it again. When God was about to make us He said, let us make man in our image. God doesn’t say that about anything else...doesn’t say that about little black cats playing with balls of thread…doesn’t say that funny little puppies romping on the lawn.

He just says that about us. Let us make man in our image. Now, there’s a conjunct of things that makes us be God’s image, but the first thing that makes us be God’s image is that we are the only creature on the face of the earth that’s interested in truth.

Did you ever catch one dog saying to another, “Now, tell me the truth?” They don’t perceive truth. They have nothing to perceive it with.

We hunger for the truth, and truth is perceived by the intellect. Truth is perceived by the intellect --that marvelous, marvelous faculty-- intellect. The intellect can know truth, and man has a yearning for truth. If you didn’t have a yearning for truth, you wouldn’t be sitting here listening, somewhat enthralled by the topic, about something you can’t even see – about something you can’t even see! I’m not showing you pictures. I’m not projecting a video. I don’t even have any illustrations. And here you are listening, you yourselves, just like the children, are vibrating evidence that the human mind, the human heart yearns for truth.

Do you not think this is one of principal things that concerned Jesus when he came? Let’s just look at some of the things he said.

“You shall know the truth and the truth shall make you free.”

Jesus says the truth makes you free. And the Holy Father in his marvelous encyclical, “Veritatis Splendor,” the Splendor of the Truth, says: we know that there can be no freedom --no freedom-- if it is not based on truth. Because God Himself said you shall know the truth and the truth –and the truth only-- shall make you free.

Let me just say in passing, as a slight tangent, but it’s quite necessary nowadays: people implicitly define freedom –people talk about our freedom, our liberty-- people implicitly define freedom as doing what you blessed please. That’s how people define freedom: doing what you blessed please.

Freedom doesn’t mean that. Freedom means… speaking now of another faculty that God gave us –intellect, to know the truth-- and now: free will. To freely make choices: that’s what freedom means. You have, I have, a will capable of making free choices.

And you know also from Jesus’ mouth that we shall be judged, every one of us, on the basis of those choices. Those who freely choose the good, go to heaven. Those who freely choose evil and repent not thereof, go to eternal loss. So freedom doesn’t mean do what you blessed please.

Freedom means you have been given by God...you as an individual person have the faculty, the power in your person of making free choices. And then you will have to give an account of all of those free choices.  And when God said let us make man in our image, that possessive pronoun “our,” which is plural, is a reflection of the most Holy Trinity.

The Church Fathers never called it a revelation because nobody understood that that is what it meant. But it is like a foreshadowing of the revealing of the most blessed Trinity –let us make man in our image-- it means now we shall make a physical being with an immortal spiritual soul. Up till then you had angels --spiritual beings without a body-- and you also had the physical universe, bodies without spirit. Let me say that again:  up till that moment you had angels --pure spirits-- and you had physical beings, bodies without spirit. And now God says we are going to make a physical being that is also a spiritual being. Unique. Up till now you either had to be an angel, a purely spiritual being, or a purely bodily being. Now let us make man in our image because God is the Truth, and God is Love, and He clearly, very clearly, so defines Himself.

Did He not say, when He came, “I am the Truth”? Six foot, 176 pounds, and He stood there and He said, “I am the Truth.” Then His best friend, the beloved disciple John, who stood at the foot of the cross, and received Jesus’ mother later, stood next to her at the foot of the cross… he repeated and repeated later on in his old age every time the Christians would go by his little house, and they would ask, “John, you walked with God. What is he like?”...And John would just repeat, “God…. Is…. Love.”

Or as they sometimes sing it (singing): “God is love.”

So God has said..."I am the Truth” ...and His best friend, inspired by the Holy Spirit, said… “God is Love.”

Let me add again, just in passing, the most sickly phrase that can come out of a human mouth is that phrase you hear almost every day: “Eh, everything is relative.”

That’s the most sickly phrase a human being can say. Let me tell you a couple of things that are not relative. Truth is not relative because God is not relative, and He has said: “I am the Truth.” And Love is not relative because Jesus’ best friend said: “God is Love.”

And since God cannot be relative, neither can Truth, neither can Love.

Our perception of truth is indeed relative. I hope to know more truth tomorrow than I know today, and if I can grow in the perception of truth therefore my perception of truth is relative...are you reading me? Same with love. I hope to love you more tomorrow than I love you today, which is already much. I hope to love you more tomorrow…now if I can grow in the living of love then my living of love is indeed relative.

But God doesn’t know just a little bit more truth every day. God is Truth Itself. Now, when you say Truth is Absolute and indeed it is because God is; and that Love is Absolute and indeed it is because God is.  If you say that Truth and Love are Absolute, then what’s left over to be relative?

Except, like, the price of a pound of ground chuck…. or a big gallon jug of milk. Those little things can be relative.

And yet, perhaps...what I’m about to say now is not a dogma of faith. It’s a reflection, very personal: perhaps the characteristic of the culture of death is the implicit defining of truth as whatever forwards the agenda of an individual. I’m going to say that again.  In the culture of death, there’s no doubt about this --there could be a doubt about as to whether this is its principal characteristic, but there is no doubt about the following statement: in the culture of death, truth is implicitly defined as whatever forwards the agenda of a given group or even of an individual. Whatever carries forward the agenda.

You know and I know that pro-life people in their demonstrations and their prayers before the abortuaries are a particularly peaceful people. But it did forward the agenda of groups like NOW and it did forward the agenda of pro-abortion groups to label these people as “religious extremists,” even “murderous thugs.” These very, very good --I even dare say holy people-- who carry the signs and give out the literature and say the prayers and do save thousands of babies…These good people who kept the almost extinguished wick alive… these people kept it alive during three decades of clerical indifference.

To characterize those people as religious extremists, as murderous thugs --well, of course, that’s the truth if you define the truth as whatever forwards your agenda-- but I say to you that the truth is not made by the human mind. The human mind and the human intellect are made by God. And the first thing that makes us be the image of God --the intellect-- I say to you that the intellect is not for the making of truth. Human beings do not make truth. The intellect that God gave us is for the discovery of truth.

I do not with my mind project these flowers. My mind is not for the projecting of flowers or to make them exist here, or maybe in mid-air or anywhere. My mind is to perceive through my senses the presence of flowers and to meditate upon what flowers are all about. I don’t make the flowers.

My mind is not placing here this lovely statue of the Blessed Mother. The statue is there. My mind is for the perceiving of the statue and its meaning. It doesn’t put it there.

Let us apply this to the faith itself. If this were a church --and there are about 200 of us here-- if this were a church and there were here a tabernacle and we all came into the church and we knew that inside that tabernacle are consecrated hosts… we know by the Catholic faith that those consecrated hosts are Jesus: His body, His blood, His soul, His divinity. St. Alphonsus adds: His merits are there, too.

St. Alphonsus has five things that he says: body, blood, soul, divinity, and merits. They’re all there. He is there, and where He is, His merits are there.

Now suppose…God forbid… God forbid…just suppose that we were all to lose the faith… God forbid…I’m just giving you an example to clarifying what I’m saying...and we were all to deny it. Either because they paid us or because we went crazy, why else would you deny it? If we were all to deny it, that consecrated host would continue to be Jesus because it is not our thought that projects Jesus-ness into the host. The reality of Jesus being there: that is what makes the host be Jesus. Because it is.

And how do we know? Because he said so: Take and eat, this is my body; take and drink, this is my blood. And how do we know that we are interpreting it correctly? Because it is not our interpretation. It’s the teaching of the Church to which He said: I am with you all days even to the end of the history of the human race and this world.

And He even said, I’ll speak with my Father and He will send the Spirit who will remain with you and recall to your minds all that I have taught you, the Spirit of Truth. Truth.

Because as simple, natural human beings – just as simple, natural human beings-- we can know truth. We can know created truth. And, by the grace of God, we can know the precise truth about God Himself.

You know why I want to home school my seminarians and my Missionary Sisters? Can I tell you why? Because I want them to fall in love with the truth. In the last analysis, I’ll bet that that’s the main reason you are home schooling your children: because you want them to fall in love with the truth.

First of all, make sure they’re hearing the truth. And not just hearing it, but falling in love with it. Because if all you do is know truth but don’t fall in love with it, all you can do is pass exams. Who cares? But if you fall in love with the truth…oh my…oh my…if you fall in love with the truth, you are going to set the world on fire.

Did you know something else? I’m leaning heavily now on St. Thomas Aquinas and isn’t he pretty much the best to lean on? With all the reverence and love towards St. Augustine, of course whom Thomas quotes so very much; I doubt there is a single saint whom Thomas quotes more than he quotes Augustine. But leaning now heavily on Thomas, Thomas says very clearly and not just in passing --this is pretty much the soul of Thomism-- that the essence of the happiness of heaven is to know...Let me look at the word “know” --Know means to perceive--and, in this case, perceive the truth. The essence of the happiness of heaven is the perception of truth.

How can you talk about it in this world? How can you?

You never get bored in heaven because it is one eternal now. You know marriage itself can come to an end because it’s dissolved in death. That’s why widows are allowed to marry and widowers ...but you also have to think, don’t you, that a man and a woman who in this world shared a sacrament must have something special between them in heaven, don’t you think? Yet God is all in all.

I try to represent it this way. Maybe I’ve told you this before. I hope you don’t mind hearing it again. Mom and Dad are Joseph and Catherine. I buried them, respectively, 15 and 25 years ago. And I yearn to see them.

I am indeed the fruit of a loving, sacramental, total self-giving .. in Jesus...from the part of Joe from Queens and Catherine from Brooklyn. And I’m trying to illustrate now, trying to communicate the truth of what Heaven is all about. I picture my father in heaven, after the Resurrection, kind of like this:

“Kitty, do you see ‘em?”

“Yes, Joe.”

“Where are the kids?”

“Right here.”

“Okay.”

So there has to be something: they shared the sacrament of Jesus loving his Church. But God is all in all and the essence of the beatific vision...and Thomas calls it “vision” because vision is a kind of knowing, is it not? When you have a vision, you’re knowing with your eyes, seeing is knowing with your eyes. That’s why Thomas carefully chooses the word “vision.” Beatific means happifying or happy-making. The essence of the happy-making vision is this: you look at God and you know Him. And He comes into you communicating His being, His essence, to you, to your knowledge directly without any pictures, without human words.

In the way Jesus said it: Enter into the joy of your Lord.

Jesus, in the particular judgment, isn’t even going to say, “I’m going to give you a whole lot of joy,” but rather: Enter into the joy of your Lord. And the joy of heaven consists in knowing face-to-face, directly, and with compenetration, knowing He Who Is The Truth: knowing The One Who Is The Truth.

All the “why” of your babyhood will be answered. It’s all there, because He is the Truth
and you will have the Truth. And then having the Truth you will so fall in love with the Truth as to never lose Him. And so it is essentially the knowing....and then the consequences of knowing...the loving.

That’s why Thomas finishes his “Adorate” by saying, “Jesus upon my present gaze hidden behind sacramental veils --because you’re looking and you see what looks like bread and smells like bread and tastes like bread --sacramental veils—Jesus upon my present gaze hidden behind sacramental veils give me that which I pine for day and night: that when You reveal Yourself to me directly, I may be happy at the sight of You for all eternity.”

That’s why you have babies. That’s why you home school them.

God love you.