On Concealing the Truth Partially

By St. John the Prophet

Question 758: If I do something against my brother and he grieves upon hearing about it, is it perhaps a good thing to hide the truth from him in order to stop the grief? Or is it better to admit my fault and ask for forgiveness?

Response: If he has clearly learned about it, and you know that the matter will be examined and revealed, then tell him the truth and ask for his forgiveness. For lying will only further provoke him. However, if he has not learned about it and will not examine the matter, then it is not improper to keep silent and not give occasion to grief.

For when the Prophet Samuel was sent to anoint David as king, he was also going to offer sacrifice to God. Yet, because he was afraid lest Saul learn about this, God said to him: "Take a heifer with you; and if the king asks you: 'Why did you come here?' tell him: 'I have come to sacrifice to the Lord'" (1 Sam. 16:2). In this way, by concealing one thing, which brought the wrath of the king, he only revealed the other.

You too, then, should be silent about that which causes grief, and the problem will pass.

- From The Letters of Saints Barsanuphios and John; translated by John Chryssavgis.

our desert

The desert is the home of despair. And despair, now, is everywhere. Let us not think that our interior solitude consists in the acceptance of defeat. We cannot escape anything by consenting tacitly to be defeated. Despair is an abyss without bottom. Do not think to close it by consenting to it and trying to forget you have consented.

This, then, is our desert: to live facing despair, but not to consent. To trample it down under hope in the Cross. To wage war against despair unceasingly. That war is our wilderness. If we wage it courageously, we will find Christ at our side. If we cannot face it, we will never find Him.

- Thomas Merton (Thoughts in Solitude)

What does not need to be endured indefinitely

.... It is one thing, however, to talk of a dialectical tension implied in the very idea of an historical Church, and quite another to excuse the corruptions and follies that are peculiar to our own time and place. What does not need to be endured indefinitely is the special irrelevance of so much of the behaviour of Church officials. Alongside the actual agony of growth in the Church there seem to be these men playing a private game amongst themselves in which the moves are directives and prohibitions and the players score points for formally going through the motions of docility or of repeating the orders correctly. It seems to me that we should treat this game as we do the phantasies of adolescence of any of the other ways in which men escape from reality; we should combine a firm determination to get rid of it eventually with a certain tolerance of it while it is being played. While Church authorities are occupied with these domination games they are neglecting their true role. It would be quite unrealistic to expect them to be sources of enthusiasm and original thought but it is their basic task to be the link between such sources, the framework within which they are kept in balance. To maintain this balance they must, of course, speak with authority, the real authority that comes with understanding and concern and listening to others; the authority that sees itself not in terms of power but as a service to the community, the channel of communication by which each part of the community is kept in touch with the whole, a whole that extends through time as well as space. - Herbert McCabe, New Blackfriars (February, 1967)

a creature in trouble

What distinguishes Judeo-Christianity in general from other world religions is its emphasis on the value of the individual person, its view of man as a creature in trouble, seeking to get out of it, and accordingly on the move. Add to this anthropology the special marks of the Catholic Church: the sacraments, especially the Eucharist, which, whatever else they do, confer the highest significance upon the ordinary things of this world, bread, wine, water, touch, breath, words, talking, listening — and what do you have? You have a man in a predicament and on the move in a real world of real things, a world which is a sacrament and a mystery; a pilgrim whose life is a searching and a finding.” – Walker Percy, “The Holiness of the Ordinary,” in Signposts in a Strange Land

The Stadium of Virtue

The word virtue has lost its force over the ages: we tend to think of a virtuous person as someone who avoids evil-doing and resists temptation. The Greek word we translate virtue means excellence. The ancient philosophers thought of the virtuous person as the one who is outstanding, who excels others. The stadium of virtue is the arena where we compete to excel - to excel in love, kindness, wisdom, self-control, justice and honesty. It is the battle-ground where we fight the dark and dangerous aspects of our own personality, the tendency to meanness, foolishness, injustice and dishonesty, the temptation to see others simply as a means to our own ends, people to be used and manipulated, for our own pleasure or our profit. - David Melling

My soul magnifies the Lord and my spirit rejoices in God my Savior

To magnify something is to make it appear larger—thus the magnifying glass, and reading glasses—and to magnify someone is to praise them. With things, this is a matter of appearance. It is helpful to enlarge something in order to see it more clearly. Praise of persons is also a matter of appearance—it heightens aspects of their character or draws attention to their achievements. It is also, on the part of the one who praises, an expression of an attitude or inner disposition. Someone who truly praises others thinks well of them, has good will towards them, wishes to honour them, does not want in any way to diminish or belittle them. Such praise is truly selfless—it doesn’t attempt to grasp a little bit of the praise, or bask in the glory. It does not calculate its own interests in magnifying the other. In this sense, true praise and authentic glorification expresses real humility, since it recognizes that in giving praise, it is not 'about me' but the one praised. This is so obviously true and important when it comes to God, uniquely worthy of all praise and honour. It is also true of the Mother of God and all the saints, for whom a relative praise and honour spring from our lips. But it is tremendously important that we see in Mary’s magnification of God a clear example and pattern for the believer of a desire, a willingness, an eagerness to enlarge and magnify others. We are to build one another up, not to make each other feel small.

that greater and better deputy

According to his own express words, Christ left two sorts of deputies in the world, two sorts of human substitutes for himself, besides that one divine invisible deputy, the Holy Ghost, who is the soul of all the love we have. But these are deputies of flesh and blood; the deputies of his power and the deputies of his weakness. The deputies of his power are his apostolic ministers, to whom he says, He that receiveth you receiveth me, and he that receiveth me receiveth him that sent me. They speak his word, they pronounce his pardon, they give his body and his blood. The deputies of his weakness are the little and the needy; and of these equally he says "He that receiveth one such child in my name, receiveth me. Neither sort of deputies represent Christ by virtue of their merits. The infirmity of the ministers always hinders the word, yet faith can hear, through all their folly, the voice of Jesus. And the weak, the little, are not always amiable. Are we not both little and weak, but mostly on the side of our faults and vices? Yet faith can see the passion of Christ in all; and faith is the gift of that greater and better deputy, the Holy Ghost who will not fail us, the love of God being shed abroad in our hearts by the Spirit whom Jesus was born to bring us. - Austin Farrer, Said or Sung