Memorial of Saint Thomas Aquinas, priest and doctor of the Church

Lectionary: 317

Summoning them, he began to speak to them in parables, "How can Satan drive out Satan?

If a kingdom is divided against itself, that kingdom cannot stand. And if a house is divided against itself, that house will not be able to stand.

President John Adams, first successor to George Washington, is often quoted,

"Facts are stubborn things; and whatever may be our wishes, our inclinations, or the dictates of our passions, they cannot alter the state of facts and evidence."

The theory was that facts are discovered as true by scientists who seek the unchanging truths of reality. That "unchanging truth" was based on the theory that God is unchanging. Even the deists of the Enlightenment, Adams among them, believed in this eternally unchanging deity.

That confidence began to erode in the twentieth century as certain proven facts contradicted each other without any possibility of resolution. For instance, is light a particle or a ray? It acts in both ways though it cannot be both. Quantum theory emerged, a way of living with two or more contradictory facts. It was largely theoretical for most people until we started navigating by GPS.

We have discovered that facts are manufactured by human beings in conversation with each other. They are made to be communicated, and often encapsulated in a few simple words. But their utility relies on the context that every party to the conversation shares. Huge, even fatal, misundertandings may ensue when the parties don't agree on the context. A billion dollar probe of Mars failed because American engineers installed a component measured with metric rather than imperial standards. Their facts were right; their context was wrong.

Facts may be useful for science, especially the hard sciences of mathematics, physics and chemistry; they're not always reliable in sociology and politics. The study of human beings,-- their attitudes, feelings, decisions and actions -- doesn't lend itself to precise measurements. They are somewhat predictable on a massive scale, as algorithms are showing, but when humans suspect they're acting predictably and being tracked, they do something weird. Even historical facts float in and out of existence like legends and myths; and historians have given up on historical theories like determinism, communism, and manifest destiny. No one knows what anyone will do next, much less how masses of people will act. Perhaps several million people will not emigrate to the United States despite their poverty and the legendary promise of el norte.

When Jesus taught his contemporaries that "a kingdom divided against cannot stand" he was speaking of Truth, not of facts. To speak the Truth one must know, love and serve the Truth. Any fool can hide the truth with a fact. Alcoholics use them often. "I'm going to run down out and buy some cigarettes." doesn't mean that at all. The truth is he's going out for alcohol, but he can't or won't say that. Sure, he buys cigarettes, but that's not why he's going out. He has no love of truth nor of the one to whom he tells this lie.

Truth is a relationship; it is a matrix of relationships which includes God, one's family, neighbors, fellow workers, citizens and church -- and the many dimensions of oneself. It takes time, deliberation, courage and dedication to tell the truth. The truth often leaves me vulnerable to pain and embarrassment. Before I can answer the simplest question I may have to ponder and pray for guidance that I might speak with integrity.

Truth is conveyed with words which are carefully chosen for their communicability. One can tell a three year old that, "Mommy has to go away for a while." but not with words like addiction, alcoholism or a history of sexual abuse. The truth in that situation has to be lived, mostly without words.

Jesus enemies accused him of their own hypocrisy. It was the only matrix they understood, a torn, fragmented world of deceit, secrets, intrigue and conspiracies, destined for annihilation. Because Truth is the only reality, the only real existence, the enemies of Jesus are doomed to evaporate like the morning frost under the noonday sun. Their memory will perish.

The faithful today, assaulted by alternate facts from political, economic, scientific and religious "authorities" rely on God's Holy Spirit to guide us. We beg the Lord to help us know, love and serve the Truth, and to hate every form of deceit.