Truth is quite the topic these days. Mostly because people choose to define truth in any way that suits them. Absolute truth is taken to be authoritarianism and it’s the real death of any kind of conversation that would lead to conversion. The encouragement in popular culture these days is to live “your truth,” whatever that might be. The problem is that “your truth” is different from my truth, which is always different from the Gospel, and it’s all just moral relativism in sheep’s clothing. When we allow ourselves to accept moral relativism, then anything goes. Yet it is absolute truth that is at the center of today’s Liturgy of the Word, and that Word beckons us to accept the Truth with a capital “T”.
Saint Paul exhorts his friend Timothy to be scrupulously careful to teach and defend the truth – “without deviation,” as he says at the end of today’s first reading. It’s an injunction that is well taken, even in our own day: we have to be that scrupulous in teaching truth, because the Truth is Christ. If we persevere in the Truth, we shall reign with Christ, but if we deny him he will deny us. Being denied by Christ our mediator and Savior is tantamount to eternal death. That’s what comes from deviating from the Truth.
Jesus brings the Truth to life in the Gospel reading by presenting us with the basis of all Christian life: love of God and love of neighbor. This is the Truth, it is the basis of the Gospel, it is the summation of all the law and the prophets, which is what the scribe was seeking of Jesus. Living “your truth” is wholly incompatible with love of God and love of neighbor, because living “your truth” lets you off the hook if love of God and/or love of neighbor becomes inconvenient. The Truth never changes, because Christ is the same yesterday, today, and for ever. If we accept this Truth, we too will not be far from the Kingdom of God.