With people, often what you don't see is what you get

By Mary Regina Morrell
©Catholic Online 2004

With people, often what you don't see is what you get

"Our own life is the instrument with which we experiment with truth." Thich Nhat Hanh

Recently I had some friends from my parish choir over for a summer get together. As the afternoon moved into evening we moved into the family room to gather around my piano and sing - just for fun. They have been here many times before, in a variety of seasons, and at every gathering someone comments about how beautiful the room is, especially if it is winter with the fireplace burning and a 10 foot Christmas tree in front of one of the windows.

Always I am grateful for the compliment but, personally, I am never quite as impressed by the beauty of what they see because I am aware of all they can't see - all of the cleaning that I have not done that should be done and all of the mess that is stored inconspicuously behind cabinet and closet doors.

The truth is that when you are aware of what lies beneath, surface beauty quickly loses its charm.

Thoreau made the same discovery when he lived intimately in nature, writing, "White Pond and Walden are great crystals on the surface of the earth, Lakes of Light.... They are too pure to have a market value; they contain no muck. How much more beautiful than our lives, how much more transparent than our characters are they! We never learned meanness of them." How good it would be to have the purity and transparency of a Lake of Light, but it is the truth of human existence that our character is formed not solely by the hand of God but within the realm of free choice and the decisions we make to live with or without integrity. And that truth makes integrity and authenticity an on-going challenge.

Mother Teresa spoke wisely when she said, "Honesty and transparency make you vulnerable. Be honest and transparent anyway."

It was the integrity of the man Nathanael that Jesus affirmed in saying, "Here is a true child of Israel. There is no duplicity in him" - and this in spite of the fact that Nathanael basically insulted Jesus by saying, "What good can come out of Nazareth?"

But Jesus saw into Nathanael's heart, as he sees into ours, and what he saw was not a man who smiled and bowed or offered his hand in friendship only to sling insults and barbs when Jesus turned his back, but, rather, a man who lived with integrity and honesty, who had "no guile in him."

Nathanael was like the blessed servant of whom St. Francis spoke: "Blessed is the servant who loves his brother as much when he is sick and useless as when he is well and can be of service to him. And blessed is he who loves his brother as well when he is afar off as when he is by his side, and who would say nothing behind his back he might not, in love, say before his face."

Personally, I often wonder what God sees when he looks into my heart because another painful truth is that the easiest person to fool about our lapses in integrity is ourselves. We live in a world where deceit is the norm and honesty is rare. We are encouraged to be and to do whatever it takes to be successful, to be noticed, to be admired, to be loved, when, in truth, we should be teaching our children and modeling for others what French author Andre Gide put so succinctly: "It is better to be hated for what you are than to be loved for what you are not."

As Catholic Christians our lives must be authentic.

Jesus knew it, Jesus lived it, Jesus died for it.

The question is, "Will we?"

____________________

Mary Regina Morrell is a free-lance writer,columnist and author of Angels in High Top Sneakers from Loyola Press.

Contact

Diocese of Metuchen
http://www.diometuchen.org NJ, US
Mary Regina Morrell - Associate Director, Office of Religious Education, 732 562.1990

Email

mmorrell@diometuchen.org

Keywords

integrity, authenticity, truth, Catholic

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