Seeing the Light of Day

AM Psalm 50 • PM Psalm [59, 60] or 33
Ecclus. 31:12-18,25-32:2 • Rev. 12:7-17 • Luke 11:53-12:12

Nothing is covered up that will not be uncovered and nothing secret that will not become known. Therefore whatever you have said in the dark will be heard in the light...

In this excerpt from Luke, Jesus readies his disciples for what is ahead. He is shoring them up for the lies others will tell, reassuring his followers that the truth will not be hidden. Jesus knows the time is coming when they will feel afraid without him.

This passage comforts me. To hear these words from Jesus, to receive his promise that truth will always come to light soothes me. As with every spoken word by Jesus recorded in the New Testament, there is the immediate context of time, place and audience, and there is the deeper, more expansive meaning to everything Jesus said. This passage speaks of justice delivered with a premise of compassion; Jesus knows the disciples will endure slander, persecution, and even death in his name.

I’ve been thinking a lot about truth since getting this reflection assignment—how fervently some work to keep truth hidden; how sometimes we think we want the truth until we discover how uncomfortable it can be. (The truth does not change according to our ability to stomach it. —Flannery O’Connor.) Truth can take quite a while to come to light. Sometimes it’s covered with so many blankets of falsehood, it nearly suffocates, and often, there are more folks working to suppress it than to uncover it. Certainly that was true in Jesus’ time; Jesus, however, still chose to speak truth to power, and his resurrection broke the paradigm to which humanity was shackled. (In a time of deceit, telling the truth is a revolutionary act. —George Orwell.)

It is deceit that causes suffering: the inauthentic, the false, the pretense, the fraudulent, the distorted, the hypocritical—in values, in relationships, in our desires and in our fears. Yes, at revelation the truth can hurt, primarily because it confronts whatever falsehood has been in place. And while we wait for all that is in darkness to reach the light, for the secrets to be uncovered and for truth to endure, we are bold and confident that not one of us is forgotten in God’s sight. We are not afraid....for the Holy Spirit is with us.

Written by Bernadette Reda

Truth is like the sun. You can shut it out for a time, but it ain’t goin’ away.
—Elvis Presley