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Scripture Reflections
08 May 2013, Wednesday, 6th Week of Easter
TRUTH AS BEYOND WORDS BECAUSE IT IS INTUITIVE
SCRIPTURE READINGS: ACTS 17:15, 22-18:1; JN 16: 12-15

Today’s scripture readings tell us that truth can never be conveyed in words or ideas adequately. Truth is beyond concepts and beyond logic. This is not to say that words cannot express the truth at all. Truth is an event, a personal encounter. Truth is basically an intuitive experience. It comes from realization.

That is why in the gospel we are told that Jesus, knowing this reality Himself, refused to explain the truth to His disciples. As such He told His disciples: “I have much more to tell you, but you cannot bear it now.” Yes, He knew that even if He were to explain to His disciples, they could never understand Him. From this we can understand why Jesus, during His ministry, was always very reticent about His identity, and very reluctant to accept the titles given to Him by others, such as Messiah and Son of God. Not because these titles were false but they were inadequate to describe His real being. We see this also in His message of the Kingdom. He knew that God cannot be explained in neat concepts but in experience. Thus, the parables became His way of helping us to enter into the experience of God.

Indeed, if the disciples could eventually come to proclaim who God is in Jesus, it was only after the resurrection experience, when they came to understand what Jesus had been saying implicitly about God and Himself in His works and in His deeds. This was what Jesus meant when He said that the Spirit of Truth living in us will lead us to understand all that He has taught us. In other words, once we acquire His Spirit, we will be able to identify ourselves with Jesus. In sharing the life and being of the Risen Lord, the disciples could understand and experience for themselves which words cannot convey. Consequently, we know that the post-resurrection titles given to Jesus by the early Church were not in any way a projection of the early Church nor a falsification of the claims of Jesus; rather they were expressing their understanding of who Jesus really is.

In contrast we have in the first reading, St Paul who attempted to explain syllogistically how God has saved us in and through Jesus. Now this is understandable. Paul must have been a great theologian, a philosopher and a lawyer. He was therefore being systematic and he followed Aristotelian logic by explaining things in a logical manner. And the people of Athens, we know, were also learned. They too wanted everything to be explained logically. That was why, initially, the Athenians were rather receptive to Paul’s presentation until, when he came to the crux of the matter about the raising of Jesus from the dead.

In the Jerusalem Bible translation, it said that the Athenians burst out laughing on hearing these words. In the American translation, we read that they sneered at him. In a further sentence, we are told that some of them told him that they should speak about this matter at another time. Being cultured, they were actually being merely polite. In real terms, what they meant was that they had enough of this rubbish and nonsense. It is illogical and absurd. Consequently, we know that Paul was not very successful in his ministry in this city. He had only a meagre conversion. This goes to say indeed that there are certain things in life that logic cannot penetrate. Paul could only speak from his experience when it came to the question of the resurrection of Jesus.

Coming to our days, we also know that current theology today is moving away from scholastic theology, which is a deductive theology, where they try to prove everything systematically. But the point is that truth cannot be proven always in that manner because truth is life. Such an inadequate presentation of truth has steered theologians to adopt a more historical approach to reality, such as the salvation-history approach, the anthropological approach, the existential approach or the transcendental approach. Truth ultimately can be demonstrated in real life experience and not in concepts.

That explains why today also, the way of catechesis is not simply by expounding the right doctrines of the Church in a coherent manner but to help them to relate with life situations and most of all, to enter into a relationship with the Lord. Thus, the RCIA process is gaining momentum and popularity in the Church as the right way of catechesis, leading catechumens to a real experience of the Risen Lord in their lives.

And finally, perhaps, Zen Buddhism illustrates beautifully what we want to say. Zen has been described as a transmission of truth without words, or tradition or scriptures or creed. Zen is a direct pointing at the mind of man; of seeing one’s true nature or in other words, the reality of life. Truth, in the final analysis, is neither logical or illogical but pan-logical or at least paradoxical. Or to put it in another way, it is intuitive.

Once, we understand that truth is beyond logic because it must be experienced; which is another way of saying that the Spirit of truth must live in us, then all the more it behooves us to be more and more in touch with the Spirit of Jesus in our lives through our intimacy with Him. Indeed, the Spirit of Jesus is so close to us; in fact living in us, that we need not go very far to find out the reality of life. We only need to get in touch with ourselves, since the Spirit, as Jesus tells us, is speaking in us and leading us into all truth. And this can happen only in prayer.

Let me conclude today’s homily with a quotation. Someone once said, Education is an admirable thing. But it is good from time to time to remind ourselves that what is really worthwhile cannot never really be taught. Let us reflect.

Written by Coadjutor Archbishop, William Goh
Spiritual Director, Catholic Spirituality Centre (CSC)
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