St. Dominic Catholic Church

Homilies

December 25, 2018 Mass During the Day

I am slowly making my way through a book titled “The Age of American Unreason in a Culture of Lies.” It focuses on the convergence of social forces that has created a perfect storm of anti-rationalism.  These include religious fundamentalism; the failure of public education to create an informed citizenry; and the power of the internet to broadcast lies that appeal to us more than truth.  The author claims we have embraced "junk thought" – the lack of effort to separate fact from opinion.

Where is truth in a culture of lies? We might even ask, like Pontius Pilate did, “what is truth?” But, like Pilate, we often don’t really want to know. The Bible knows very well our tendency to accept lies that appeal to us. The third chapter of Genesis famously points out the first lie, told to us by the father of lies, “You will not die if you eat the fruit of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil.  Certainly not – you will become like gods who know good and evil.”

Human history with its wars, political intrigues, destructive ideologies and bigotry is a consequence of our accepting this first lie. My pride is nothing less than an embrace of lies. Pride is a story I fabricate about myself to mask my insecurity over notknowing everything, not trusting God’s declaration that human life is very good, not believing that in spite of my sin and weakness, God still loves me. Today we celebrate the incarnation of Truth into this culture of lies. He is revealed as “the Word” who was with God and who is God. He is the word through whom all things came to be. God speaks the Word, the first chapter of Genesis reveals, and there is light, and darkness, dry land and seas, vegetation, sun, moon, stars, fish, animals – and us. The Word is Truth, because all creation comes from it. That means what exists corresponds exactly to the Word. That is the definition of Truth – when I speak the truth, my words match reality. When I lie, reality is obscured.

When the Word became flesh, He who is the Truth immersed himself in our web of lies, and into the violence that springs from them. It was inevitable that those who are slaves to lies would hate the light and not accept him. To accept Jesus means to conform our lives to the Truth – to conform our lives to reality. This is the definition of humility – to be rooted in the Truth of who we are – weak, mortal, often selfish – and yet loved so much by God that He would enter our fallen world to be rejected and crucified. The humble person conforms his or her life to the Truth of who they are. They stand before Jesus, the “Light that has come into the world” and let him reveal their sin, their need of a savior, and His desire to free them from the slavery to lies, no matter how comforting or self-justifying they may be.

To accept the Word made flesh is to receive power to become children of God – to become conformed to the truth, no matter how inconvenient or painful. To accept the Word made flesh means we no longer try to shape reality according to our desire for what we wish were true, but to bend our knee before the Truth God the Father speaks. To become humble is to prepare for the last judgment.  In his Incarnation, the Word became flesh in the form of an innocent and vulnerable child. On the Last Day, He will return in his glorious resurrected body with judgment. That judgment is nothing less than presenting us with the Truth – a truth we cannot call “fake news”; a truth against which we will have no argument, no excuse. The Truth will not judge us so much as compel us to make a final decision – to accept it - no matter how painful that might be - and enter fully into the light and his kingdom. Or to continue to deny it, to prefer the lies of our pride and thus remain in slavery, darkness, and the solitude that lies create.

In the eighth chapter of the Gospel of John Jesus says to those Jews who believed in him,“I am the light of the world. Whoever follows me will not walk in darkness, but will have the light of life.” (8:12)  He also tells them, “If you remain in my word, you will truly be my disciples,and you will know the truth, and the truth will set you free.” It is dangerous to believe in Jesus – dangerous to our pride. The light of Jesus dispels the fog created by the lies we tell ourselves. The truth of Jesus reveals that we do not know good from evil on our own. The truth is we do not know our own hearts very well, much less the hearts of others, so we cannot judge them. When we do so, we do the work of the accuser, the serpent who told us the lie we love to hear – that we know good and evil well enough to declare those around us good or evil. And in a culture of lies, we often call evil “good” if it benefits us. We commit adultery, abortion, murder, theft; we cover up sexual abuse and we gossip all under the belief that in some respect it’s “good” for us. We call good “evil” because it challenges and makes demands upon us. So we reject Jesus’ demands that we pray for our enemy, care for the poor, relieve the suffering of the sick, visit the criminal in prison.

But starting today, all that can change. We can embrace the light who comes to us in the unthreatening package of a baby, placed in a borrowed manger. God entices us, woos us, seduces us with his goodness. As we prepare to receive this word made flesh in communion, let us listen to him, trust him who is Truth incarnate; follow him who is the ultimate Good; love him for his ever-ancient, ever-new beauty. And may all the ends of the earth see the salvation of our God in us, his redeemed.