Great Modern Tragedies

200 Words: Receiving truth and making it our own forges our personal and collective identity:

The giving of the Ten Commandments (Exodus 20).

So many of the young – and not so young – have never heard of the Decalogue.

This is truly one of the great modern tragedies, for the commandments promote and protect fundamental human values:

God

Respect

Rest

Family

Life

Sexual Fidelity

Property

Speech

These values are objectively true. Observe two points.

First, an experiential truth:

We learn about evil by not doing it. We learn about good by doing it.

For instance, we only understand the evil of gossip (‘talking behind a person’s back’) by not doing it. The experience of the absence of evil confirms why we should avoid such behaviour.

Likewise, we only understand the goodness of rest by entering into it. The experience of the presence of good confirms why we should pursue such behaviour.

Second point.

Receiving truth and making it our own forges our personal and collective identity:

When I can say, ‘I am not a murderer,’ ‘I am not an adulterer,’ ‘I am not a deceiver,’ then objective truth has become subjective truth.

We let the truth speak, enter us and change us so that it becomes ours.

We become people of truth.

Amen.