Lent Week 4: Saturday
FRIENDS OF LIES…
The Gospel today describes the confusion in the minds of the people in the crowd. While others hail Jesus as the Prophet, or as the Christ, others dismiss this seed of belief. They insist that Jesus the Galilean has nothing to do with the Davidic lineage, and thus cannot possibly be the Messiah. If they only knew where Jesus was born and where his earthly family traced its roots.
This confusion led to division and for the first time, we hear of the Lord’s enemies plotting a concrete action against him, and that is to arrest him. However even the guards are wary of making such a move since they felt in their hearts that there was something different in Jesus; that he was not an ordinary man.
This is the mark of insidious evil: that it distorts the truth and will not listen to the truth. Even if truth stares people at the face, people comfortable with lies will rather listen to what they want to hear, see what they want to see, believe the concoction of gossip they uphold as verity.
Today we experience the blatant willful blindness of people who replace the truth with falsity because they want to support this or that cause the like even if it be an unjust war, this or that personality they are devoted to even in the midst of that person’s corruption, this or that religion they profess to be superior even if God calls for a humble, open heart. People are willing to take in lies in the form of fake news in social media, disinformation in the internet, and crooked reasoning in public debates. Perhaps we ourselves are also caught up in this web of untruth, albeit unknowingly.
To ignore the truth is to ignore and despise the Lord for the Lord Jesus is the Way, the Truth, and the Life. Maybe the truth hurts, maybe the truth is uncomfortable, maybe the truth does not agree with our views and lifestyles. But the truth remains the firm, and cannot be distorted or hidden.
This Lenten season asks us to make an assessment of our relationship with the truth about ourselves, our relationships, our preferences, our lifestyle, or our faith. Ask the Lord Jesus to help you to seek the truth and embrace it, for only knowing the truth can set you free.
