Jubilee 2021: Teacher of Truth
‘Objective Truth’ has been out of fashion for some time – in fact, it’s so out of fashion that even pointing out its old-fashionedness is out of fashion. Whether you’re talking to a post-postmodernist, a trans-postmodernist, a digimodernist, or even a meta-modernist, I think we can agree that there’s not a lot of room for the discussion of ‘Objective Truth’ in our relativist society. In fact, Pilate’s famed question to Jesus seems applicable now more than ever: ‘What is Truth?’[1]
Yet, the fact that this was a question posed approximately two thousand years ago seems to suggest that the state of affairs is not really a new one. The changes of the last century have been notable and the attack on the very idea of ‘Objective Truth’ has been relentless, but if we look closely at our history, we’ll see that this questioning of Truth has very early origins:
‘Now the serpent was more subtle than any other wild creature that the Lord God had made. He said to the woman, “Did God say, ‘You shall not eat of any tree of the garden’?”’[2]
‘Did God say?’
Other translations have it as: ‘Did God really say?’
Now, we’re not suggesting that the Devil is at the root of every question - that would hardly be a very Dominican thing to say! He is, however, at the root of every lie, the very ‘Father of Lies’ as Jesus calls him, and it is these lies that cause so much confusion and doubt in our world.
It was so in St. Dominic’s world as well. We might find it hard to identify at all with thirteenth-century France, but the opinions about God were as many and varied as they are today. People came down on all sides of the argument, with some throwing off restraint altogether and merrily going on their way in fits of violence and self-interest, while others responded to these excesses with a rigid purity that led one group to be labeled ‘the Perfect’ because of the severity of their teachings about the evils of the flesh.
It goes without saying that these extremes, and every variation in between, had serious effects on people’s lives. It was St. Dominic’s experience of the sheer number of people suffering under the influence of such ideas that fired up the love of Christ in him and ignited his calling as a preacher to teach the Truth of God’s Revelation to man. It is very fitting, then, to find ‘Teacher of Truth’ near the top of the O Lumen’s descriptors of him. Those familiar with his Order will know that its very motto is Veritas, and its mission is to preach the Word of God, Jesus Christ, Who is Truth.
This is not to say, however, that St. Dominic merely went forth and added his own opinion to the fray. He did not preach the Gospel according to his private judgment. He certainly did not offer flippantly his ungrounded personal views. In fact, he began his preaching mission by dedicating himself to arduous prayer and study, which have become the pillars of the Dominican Order to this day. His humility in this is apparent. He turned his entire focus to the study of Sacred Scripture – carrying a copy of the Gospel of St. Matthew everywhere – and to the Deposit of Faith handed down in the Tradition of the Church. He became saturated with the Truth, so that he was ready to face any question and really share Christ with those who heard him. What was more, he lived it. He knew that for people to authentically meet Jesus, they had to meet Him in the practical reality of his life - and when he founded the Order, he knew he had to instill this in his preachers too.
This highlights another aspect of ‘teaching’ that St. Dominic understood well. He knew that to ‘teach’ goes beyond just ‘saying’ or even ‘telling’ the Truth. There is a reality to it that involves the other person’s receptivity to what is being taught. Teaching cannot be forced, it cannot be violently imposed, it must be received, which is no small responsibility for the teacher. It takes time and it takes commitment to the other. In short, it takes fraternity - which is the Order’s central theme for this year’s Jubilee: at Table with St. Dominic.
Like Christ, St. Dominic did not preach at sinners, he ate with them.
Even in his early days, before the Order, a story is told of his meeting with an inn-keeper in the Albi region of France. They talked all through the night, exchanging ideas until St. Dominic was able to convince him that the Church held the fullness of Truth for human flourishing in the light of God’s plan.
Teaching requires this kind of love – a true seeing of the other in an attempt to understand why it is and what it is they believe. Only then can we meet the challenge of understanding Christ fully in our own lives and only then can others engage with the Truth in their deepest being without coercion or disregard in the context of a genuine connection and interest in their wellbeing.
Of course, there are situations where even the perfect conditions do not yield the fruit for which we might hope. There will be those who do not accept the Truth and few things can be harder for one who teaches, and certainly few things more painful to one who loves. We want others to receive the great joy we have in Christ, we want them to experience the riches of His redemption and love. So, to be teachers of Truth, we need a very specific virtue to bear with the pain that comes from keeping this tension of loving someone, continuing to share God’s Truth with them and yet refusing to force what we want on them just to resolve the difficulty. This virtue is patience, and it is not just ‘grinning and bearing’, it is a choice to take on the pain of the situation and to persist in it, leaving the rest to God.
Join us in a fortnight when we’ll reflect on St. Dominic as the ‘Rose of Patience’.
Blessed St. Dominic, Teacher of Truth, pray for us!
[1] John 18:38 (RSVCE)
[2] Genesis 3:1
