25 Dec 2019, Christmas Day. Cycle A-2020. Is 52:7-10 + Heb 1:1-6 + Jn 1:1-18.

And the Word was God… What came to be through him was life, and this life was the light of the human race… While the law was given through Moses, grace and truth came through Jesus Christ (Jn 1:1, 2b, 17).

What is truth? (Jn 18:38). Jesus avoided the question, but philosophers tried to answer it. Not as simple to define as they thought.

Anyway, we seek the truth by investigation. Truth, thinkers say, conforms to reality as the senses perceive it. However, since senses can err, a fact may, initially, be known as truth until it is proven false.

We also seek truth by reason. What the senses cannot perceive, the mind can conceive. Science searches truth both by investigation and by reason.

We also accept truth from revelation by the Word of God, who is the Truth, and from those He put in authority.

A lie is a deliberate falsity, a quenching of truth. A lie is a deliberate cover-up of evil, and a deliberate deception from truth.

Those who indulge in lies try to justify, “Your truth and my truth may not be the same,” Those who seek to advance a philosophy that others perceive as evil relativize truth.

However, the truth is the light of the world. When truth is relative, darkness reigns. When darkness reigns, evil annihilates life. VSS

“And this is the verdict, that the light came into the world, but people preferred darkness to light. For everyone who does wicked things hates the light and does not come toward the light, so that his works may not be exposed. but whoever lives the truth comes to the light so that his works may be clearly seen as done in God” (Jn 3:19-21).