Father John A. Hardon, S.J. Archives

Christian Spirituality

True

by Fr. John A. Hardon, S.J.

An American brewing company uses the word “True” as a slogan in its popular commercials. Even more audaciously, advertisements for a well-known beer imported to this country exhort the reader in large print to “Seek the Truth.” I’m aware of the ancient saying In vino veritas (in wine there is truth), but these advertisements are suggesting something more than that alcohol can dissolve one’s reserve and loosen the tongue. Are these advertisements an exercise of cynicism and cultural nihilism, or a cry of desperation and despair?

In a society such as ours that rejects metaphysics, glorifies moral relativism, promotes blatant materialism, and whose academics are busy deconstructing the truth, it should not surprise us that an enormous spiritual void has emerged, which many desperately try to fill with frenetic consumerism, joyless hedonism, or bogus spirituality.

It falls upon the Christian living in such a vacuous society to reconstruct the truth; to witness to the One who is Truth Incarnate. But we can never hope to fulfill such a task without the benefit of a deep, rich interior life that enables us to say with St. Paul: “The life I live now is not my own; Christ is living in me” (Gal. 2:20).

The interior life is our life in the Spirit, hidden from the world. St. Paul writes, “Your life is hidden now with Christ in God” (Col. 3:3). It is the life of prayer, of piety, of spiritual yearning and struggle, and of self-abnegation that enables Christians to reflect the light of Christ in a darkening world.

We can do no better than to turn to Our Lady of Grace, the Mother of the interior life, to ask her to help us to live a profound interior life in conformity to the will of her Son, Our Lord Jesus Christ, the True Word of God.

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