Truth Hurts
A Reading from the Second Book of Esdras:
Then the angel that had been sent to me, whose name was Uriel, answered and said to me, “Your understanding has utterly failed regarding this world, and do you think you can comprehend the way of the Most High?”
Then I said, “Yes, my lord.”
And he replied to me, “I have been sent to show you three ways, and to put before you three problems. If you can solve one of them for me, then I will show you the way you desire to see, and will teach you why the heart is evil.”
I said, “Speak, my lord.”
And he said to me, “Go, weigh for me the weight of fire, or measure for me a blast of wind, or call back for me the day that is past.”
I answered and said, “Who of those that have been born can do that, that you should ask me about such things?”
And he said to me … “I have asked you only about fire and wind and the day—things that you have experienced and from which you cannot be separated, and you have given me no answer about them.”
He said to me, “You cannot understand the things with which you have grown up; how then can your mind comprehend the way of the Most High?”
Here ends the reading.
Homily:
Lord, we pray for the preacher, for You know his sins are great.
Grace, mercy and peace to you from God our Father and from our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ. Amen.
Thus far on our midweek angelic tour through Lent, we’ve hit the big three archangels: Sts Michael, Gabriel, and Raphael. The first two have impeccable pedigree, appearing prominently in both the Hebrew Scriptures and the New Testament. The third effectively has his own book of the Bible, even if it rarely makes it into Protestant canons these days.
But the fourth is a little more out there, a little more recherché. He appears in the books of Enoch and 2 Esdras, which have an odd standing in the history of the Church. Enoch has been much beloved, no doubt, but never gained the status of sacred Scripture outside of Ethiopia. And while 2 Esdras has appeared in a few authoritative collections—the Latin Vulgate, for instance, and the Old Slavonic Bible—it has done so only in appendices, as an unofficial add-on to the text.
In Enoch there are four archangels; 2 Esdras lists seven. And these again are numbers of celestial significance. Angels, classically, were always associated with the stars. And while the names of archangels five, six, and seven vary widely, depending upon what you’re reading, number four is fairly consistent. I suspect that’s because four is such a satisfying number: four directions, four seasons, four elements, that sort of thing. And our fourth angel tonight is Uriel—the “Light of God” or “Fire of God”—Archangel of Truth.
Uriel, or Auriel, is often conflated with other angels in religious literature, most notably Phanuel, whose name means “Face of God.” He is particularly popular in Anglican piety, quite possibly because the motto of Oxford University, “The Lord is My Light,” appears to be a variation on his name. When each archangel is associated with a season, Uriel gets the fiery heat of summer. For indeed, truth is a blazing and a burning thing, isn’t it? It brings forth life and death, health and harm; both terror and reassurance.
When we talked about Michael and Gabriel—those often interchangeable angels of justice and of mercy—I touched on how these concepts, seemingly at odds here below, melt into one in God. For God, justice and mercy are both the same thing: both truth. For truth is at once merciful and just, is it not? Burning away falsehood, cutting away lies. Truth hurts, yes. Yet at the same time, the truth shall set you free.
A perfect mercy allows for justice, for redemption; and a perfect justice culminates in mercy, in forgiveness. This is most certainly true. Yet we cannot allow, as our culture so often does, for truth-telling to become something petty and cruel. In popular culture, even in comedy, we have this modern trope that smart people are mean, that they don’t care about your feelings, or the harm that they might cause. Such is the price of truth, we think, obnoxious as we are. But it mustn’t be so.
Real truth, true truth, cannot be separated from love; nor can love be separated from truth. To cleave the two apart is just to kill them both. If what we do is unloving, then it simply isn’t true. And if we have to lie to love, then it was never love at all. This must be our litmus test for speaking the truth, for living the truth. Is what we do out of love? If not, then the entire endeavor is false through and through.
Much of religious truth deals with acceptance: accepting things, accepting people, not as we want them to be, not as we would have them be, but as they are—and loving them all the same, loving them all the more. When I was younger, which feels longer ago now than it was, I had many fears, many anxieties: fear of failure, fear of losing things and situations and even people who were dear to me; losing indeed my home. It ate at me for years.
And much of that has passed, at least for the time being. Not because bad things didn’t happen; they did. Not because they won’t happen again; they will. But because I’m no longer quite so concerned about the way that things should be, the way I would want them to be. Things are what they are. I have come to see situations, vocations, and relationships more for what they truly are than for what I thought they were, what I thought they ought to be. And that includes myself.
With this comes relief, a deeper and (I hope) abiding peace. Come what may, I am not alone. Come what may, I am loved. Come what may, we shall face it together, in truth and so in love. Because Truth, for Christianity, goes far beyond mere fact. Truth for us is a person, the person of Jesus Christ. And I may not be able to explain the mysteries of the universe, let alone the hidden depths of God. Heck, I may not be able to explain my feelings or motivations from moment to moment.
But I look to Christ and know I’m loved. I look to Christ and know I’m forgiven. I look to Jesus Christ, Crucified and Risen, and know, deeply, truly, fully, that there is nowhere I could go, nothing I could do, no-one I could lose, that could ever possibly separate me from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord. I look to His wounds and I am healed. I look to His death and I am raised. I look to His victory there upon that Cross and all my myriad failures simply come undone.
So come heaven or hell, come fire and ice, come laughter or tears, there is my Truth. There is my love. There is the One who has set me free. And He shall ever be true.
O holy St Uriel, intercede for us, that our hearts may burn with the fire of the Sacred Heart of Jesus. Assist us in coöperating with the graces of our confirmation, that the gifts of the Holy Spirit may bear fruit within our souls.
Obtain for us the grace to use the sword of truth, to pare away all that is not in conformity to the most adorable Will of God in our lives, that we may fully participate in the army of the Church Militant; of the Prince of Peace.
In the Name of the Father and of the +Son and of the Holy Spirit.
Amen.
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