Rev. José Mario O. Mandía
jmom.honlam.org
We have seen that the eighth commandment not only requires that we live by truth, but also with charity. Why? Because charity is the greatest of the commandments. “Rather, speaking the truth in love, we are to grow up in every way into him who is the head, into Christ” (Ephesians 4:15). We hear one moving example of the Lord’s truth and love while he hung on the Cross: “Father, forgive them; for they know not what they do” (Luke 23:34). Yes, Jesus declares that they have sinned. God is just. But God’s Love is greater.
This commandment is especially relevant in our times, not only for those working in the mass media, but for anyone who uses social media. All of us who use social media should listen to what the Compendium says. “The information provided by the media must be at the service of the common good. Its content must be true and – within the limits of justice and charity – also complete. Furthermore, information must be communicated honestly and properly with scrupulous respect for moral laws and the legitimate rights and dignity of the person” (CCCC 525).
Pope Francis, in this year’s Message for the 57th World Day of Social Communications, reminds us about how we can act with justice and charity: “Jesus warns us that every tree is known by its fruit (cf. Lk 6:44): ‘The good man out of the good treasure of his heart produces good, and the evil man out of his evil treasure produces evil; for out of the abundance of the heart his mouth speaks’ (v. 45). This is why, in order to communicate truth with charity, it is necessary to purify one’s heart.”
There is one more aspect of human life that the eighth commandment covers, and that is beauty and sacred art.
We have seen in Bite-Size Philosophy (30 & 31) that being, truth, good and beauty are the same thing in reality (though in our mind – conceptually – they are not the same). Whatever exists is true, good and beautiful. If we have a moral duty to seek the truth and the good, we also have a moral duty to seek the beautiful.
“Is there anyone who does not know Dostoyevsky’s often quoted sentence: ‘The Beautiful will save us’? However, people usually forget that Dostoyevsky is referring here to the redeeming Beauty of Christ…”
Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger’s (later Pope Benedict XVI) message to the Communion and Liberation Meeting at Rimini, 24-30 August 2002.
“The truth is beautiful, carrying in itself the splendor of spiritual beauty. In addition to the expression of the truth in words there are other complementary expressions of the truth, most specifically in the beauty of artistic works. These are the fruit, both of talents given by God and of human effort. Sacred art by being true and beautiful should evoke and glorify the mystery of God made visible in Christ, and lead to the adoration and love of God, the Creator and Savior, who is the surpassing, invisible Beauty of Truth and Love” (CCCC 526).
This search for beauty is a challenge for our times which people call the “post-truth era” (see BSP 56 “Does the truth still matter?”). This post-truth, post-beauty mentality has infiltrated some ‘modern sacred art’. We find images of the Lord or the saints who are mangled beyond recognition or church music fit for a dance party.
Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger (Pope Benedict XVI) explained: “So it is that Christian art today is caught between two fires (as perhaps it always has been): it must oppose the cult of the ugly, which says that everything beautiful is a deception and only the representation of what is crude, low and vulgar is the truth, the true illumination of knowledge. Or it has to counter the deceptive beauty that makes the human being seem diminished instead of making him great, and for this reason is false.
“Is there anyone who does not know Dostoyevsky’s often quoted sentence: ‘The Beautiful will save us’? However, people usually forget that Dostoyevsky is referring here to the redeeming Beauty of Christ. We must learn to see Him. If we know Him, not only in words, but if we are struck by the arrow of His paradoxical beauty, then we will truly know Him, and know Him not only because we have heard others speak about Him. Then we will have found the beauty of Truth, of the Truth that redeems. Nothing can bring us into close contact with the beauty of Christ himself other than the world of beauty created by faith and light that shines out from the faces of the saints, through whom his own light becomes visible” (Message to the Communion and Liberation Meeting at Rimini, 24-30 August 2002).
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