Veritas




An article published in the magazine of the Dominican Studentate at Orlim, Aspiring Preachers, Issue 3 (2020), pp. 24-26.


What is truth? This question that Pilate asked Jesus is one which is not new to human beings – it was asked down the ages. However, today, more than ever, this question is being raised as we live in a world of lies and deceptive appearances. Take any sphere of human activity – politics, religion, surveys and researches, science, media and advertising, education – they all try to tell us that this or that is true. Every newspaper and TV channel boasts that it presents the objective and true story. Many movies and serials claim to be ‘based on true events.’ But we know that much of this is fake. Relativism and subjectivity characterize the beliefs and behaviours of our day. In a world that is increasingly presenting falsehood to the gullible, we could wonder if anything at all is true, and if so, how do we recognize it and how does it impact us?

It’s not easy to find an answer to such a monumental question. However, we are not altogether helpless in our search. As Christians we could recall the words of Jesus, “I am the way, the truth and the life.” This was indeed a phenomenal claim, since no other authority claimed to be the truth, while many claimed to know or to teach the truth. Jesus is the truth, because he pre-existed the created world, because he is of one substance with God the Father, and it is through Him that God created the entire world, including human beings and all that pertains to human life. St. John writes, “In the beginning was the Word, and the word was God… All things came into being through Him.” (Jn 1:1,3)

Even then, we might ask, how does this religious belief influence the other areas in our life? Jesus might very well be the truth in a religious sense (he might truly be the Son of God and he might be correct in all that he taught), but how does this reach out to the other areas of life? Even the holiest of saints, the most profound mystics were trapped in the errors of their times. Jesus might very well be the truth about God, but is He also the truth about human life and activity, about all the things that we experience in our world and in our lives?

Philosophers have much to say about the truth of things, though they never seem to agree on what it is. And yet, the truth lies precisely in this – that there is no truth in anything or anyone else but in Jesus. Once we have firmly established this, our lives are grounded in truth and everything around us makes so much sense and carries so much meaning, all because they are viewed from the perspective of the unchanging truth, who is Christ. Christ is the absolute truth, while everything else has only a relative truth. The Psalmist sang to God, “In your light we see light.” (Psalm 36:9) We could very well paraphrase this to say that in God’s truth – Jesus – we see truth.

The Dominican Order adopted ‘Veritas’ (Truth) as its motto, a reminder that everything that makes up the Dominican’s life is a pursuit of truth – be it his vows, his community life, his study, his prayer or ministry – all these are a pursuit of the truth, and not only of any truth, but of the firm, unshakeable truth found in the person of Jesus Christ. The friar preacher could well describe Jesus as Mother Teresa once did: “Jesus is the truth – to be told.”

Pilate with all his authority, status and wealth is indeed a good symbol of the modern world which has preoccupied itself with so much superficiality that it has become blind to the truth standing before it. When Jesus stood before Pilate, silent to his question, I do not think that Christ was refusing an answer; rather he was answering Pilate in a voice too profound to put into human language. He was allowing Pilate to look at the truth, to stand before it face to face, to dialogue with it, to know that it was not merely some fact or conviction, but it (Truth) was a living person. ‘Veritas’ reminds us of our mission – whether we are Dominicans or not – of presenting the truth before the world, even when this truth is hard to recognize because it often stands before us powerless, wounded and weak. The raucous mob still shouts out loudly to do away with the truth, and yet, it is only when we come to know the truth that it will have the power to set us free.

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