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<\/a><\/div>\n<\/div>\nBut that\u2019s an aside; what is important is what Havel said, what he quoted: \u201cTherefore, faithful Christian, seek Truth, listen to the Truth, hear Truth, love Truth, speak Truth, uphold Truth, defend Truth until death; for Truth shall deliver you from sin, from the Devil, from death of the soul, and in the end, from death everlasting.\u201d<\/p>\n
Now Havel was not really a believer. He was baptized and raised Catholic, but he was not religious; he had a sense of Being but that was about it. Playwright, imprisoned political dissident, democratically elected first president of the Czech Republic after the so-called Velvet Revolution, Havel was not religious, but he was moral and, in a way, spiritual. Which made him a better politician than most, better even than many politicians who do call themselves Christian.<\/p>\n
Because he understood the necessity of truth. \u201cI merely take the side of truth against lies, the side of sense against nonsense, the side of justice against injustice,\u201d he once wrote. Again, as I said, he was a better politician than most.<\/p>\n
But that too is an aside. What has always impressed me and convicted me when reading Havel\u2019s words was how he expected Christians to be people of truth. He assumed it; he assumed that everyone knew Christians are truthful. Even when it was plain that Christians weren\u2019t acting like it, still Havel clearly expected that Christians, if they would be faithful, would always be truthful people, that they would always \u201clive in the truth\u201d as he liked to put it.<\/p>\n
Which, despite the tragedy that Havel himself never rediscovered the truth that is Jesus Christ, is the lesson and the reminder for us, the lesson we Christians sometimes must relearn repeatedly, that we simply cannot be Christians if we are not fully people of truth.<\/p>\n
And it\u2019s the recurring lesson in this Sunday\u2019s readings. God\u2019s warning to Ezekiel, the \u201cwatchman,\u201d is blunt, forthright. He says to him, \u201cwhen you hear me say anything, you shall warn them for me\u201d (Ez 33:7). The prophet is to speak the whole truth of God to the people, what St. Paul later called the \u201cwhole counsel of God\u201d (Acts 20:27). To avoid speaking the truth, a prophet would not only be irresponsible, but he would also \u201cdie for his guilt\u201d (Ez 33:9).<\/p>\n
But it\u2019s not just prophets that bear responsibility for the truth. From Psalm 95, when the people of God, that\u2019s us, hear the voice of God, the voice of truth, we shouldn\u2019t harden hearts \u201cas at Meribah,\u201d that is, when they put God to the test and almost killed Moses (Ps 95, Ex 17:1-7). If the prophet must speak the truth, we must do our part and receive the truth.<\/p>\n
St. Paul, however, talks about love. \u201cOwe nothing to anyone, except to love one another,\u201d he writes (Rom 13:8). But isn\u2019t that the same as the truth? St. Aelred of Rievaulx, the medieval Cistercian monk and spiritual master, once wrote that we always owe our friends the truth because \u201cwithout it the word friendship has no meaning.\u201d<\/p>\n
What St. Paul teaches us here is that the truth we speak is the truth of God \u2014 inexhaustible, merciful, open to suffering. Like Jesus, we speak truth in love, without aggression or violence, ready to suffer at the hands of those to whom we speak, forgiving them even when they know not what they do.<\/p>\n
Which is love that requires incredible strength. And here we come to the Gospel of Matthew. Jesus is talking about the nature of the Christian community, that Christians should be so truthful to each other that they are willing to speak truth to one another, including difficult truth. \u201cIf your brother sins against you, go and tell him his fault,\u201d Jesus tells his disciples (Mt 18:15). To put it simply, a believer should be willing to speak truth to a fellow believer even if that means calling them out for their sins.<\/p>\n
Now we should note here that the words \u201cagainst you\u201d do not appear in many ancient manuscripts; that is, it\u2019s possible Jesus is saying something even more radical, that Christians should call each other out whenever a believer sins and not just when they sin \u201cagainst you.\u201d This takes Christian commitment to truth further, beyond the interpersonal and into the communal. It suggests that we should be willing, in love, to call out a fellow believer whenever he or she fails to live according to the truth of Christ. This takes truth-telling to a whole other level.<\/p>\n
And what if that was what Jesus was saying? What if he was saying we should be fully truthful like that? If so, we\u2019d really want to be sure that our hearts were not hardened to the voice of the Lord. We would also really want to be sure that we recognized and received true prophets and not false ones. We\u2019d also want to be sure we know how to speak truth in love.
And maybe that\u2019s the point, exactly the renewal we Christians must seek.<\/p>\n
Father Joshua J. Whitfield<\/a> is pastor of St. Rita Catholic Community in Dallas and author of \u201cThe Crisis of Bad Preaching\u201d (Ave Maria Press, $17.95) and other books.<\/em><\/p>\n\n
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