Live By The Absolute Standard Of Truth

There are a couple of points that can be made from today’s Gospel.

First, the goal of the Feast of Tabernacles observed by the Jews was seeking God every morning for eight days in the rich symbols of water and light. The religious leaders were, in essence, every day seeking the face of God in the morning and rejecting Him in the afternoons when they sought to lay hands on Jesus as He taught in the Temple. Blinded by pride, religious intransigence, and tradition, they rejected the very Savior they sought in their Temple rituals.

When we seek God in the Eucharist and in the consolations of the faith let us make sure that we are seeking the Giver as well as the gifts. Let us seek Him simply because He is. Let us not fall to the temptation of checking the “religious” box every Sunday and live like everyone else the rest of the week.

Second, the religious authorities did not simply dismiss Jesus as a deranged man with strange ideas. For them, ideas about the faith were matters of life and death. Ideas do matter. Compare with the “anything goes” philosophy adopted today that tolerates all manner of death-dealing ideas. Today all “truths” are equal. Of course, the subtext is that if you are so naïve as to believe in absolute truth you can’t possibly be relevant in the public square. But Jesus was relevant in the public square of His day, so much so that He was arrested and condemned for His assertion of Truth.

We as well are to live by the absolute standard of truth given by the Lord and His Church. We cannot and should not make things up as we go along. 2,000 years of faith lived, taught, explained and witnessed to, often in blood, militate against the easy way out. Let us be salt and light to a dying world.

Lavinia Spirito is the Founding Team Teaching Leader for Catholic Way Bible Study. Through Renewal Ministries in Ann Arbor, Michigan, she collaborates in the Young Adult Ministry, i.d.916, and is part of the Teaching Team for their annual Summer Institute School of Bible Study. Lavinia is co-host of “Real Living” and “Unpacking the Gospel,” two weekly radio programs on relevant issues facing today’s Catholics.