What Is Truth?

“Quid est veritas?”

What is truth?

This is the question of all ages. The question of Pontius Pilate, two thousand years ago, when confronted with Jesus the Nazarene, who claimed to be the Son of God.

It is also the question of today, when I scroll through my Facebook newsfeed, or when I go on Substack to read an essay written by someone who claims to have the truth, or when I read something sent to me by my father via email, or when I hear someone talking on the bus. Everything now, it seems, needs an extra verification. An extra amount of time to see if indeed it is truth. This is only getting worse with AI slop that looks like a real person posted it, but in reality, it is just software, originally written by a real person, but now writing its own stories, pretending to be a person sharing a truth designed for the algorithms to share with the real person on the other end.

Indeed, Pilate, what is truth?

Today is Good Friday. The second of the Easter Triduum Liturgies. I was born and raised Catholic, so the Crucifixion as well as the Resurrection are etched deep into the recesses of both my mind and my heart.

Yes, I left the Church for over a decade, but that is a story for perhaps another memoir. One that is so very typical—the natural searching by my soul for truth, for God—that led me to abandon the faith I’d been given in order that I might meet other truths, other religions and practices that would eventually teach me that God is found in all of them, as well as the faith of my bones, of my ancestors, of my family. I had to flee the religion of my youth to find it, so to speak, which makes it all the more precious now.

On a practical level, while my faith journey took me away from the structure and ritual of the religion in which I had been raised, I never truly abandoned it. I continued to pray the Rosary alongside a Tarot card or I-Ching reading (gasp go those Christians who have never succumbed to the lure of the occult). The Hail Mary is my earworm, always has been, and life without the Rosary is impossible for me, even when I was a hedge witch.

So it wasn’t coincidence that in the summer of 2020, during in the locked-down world of Covid, when I found myself homeless after the wildfire, all my rosaries, tarot cards, and the numerous holy books I’d gathered from faiths all over the world burned to ash, the first package to arrive at my rental in Los Gatos was...a rosary.

My friend Julie sent it, and that day, I began to pray on my hands and knees. Soon after, I started going to town with my dog Evelyn, walking to the coffee shop with rosary in hand. We would sit in front of the statue of Mary outside the local church in town and pray while I drank a latte. Sometimes, I would simply hold the rosary and stare at the statue and at the people who walked by, grateful to see humans.

I watched as cars pulled up and people got out to bring flowers to lay at Our Lady’s feet. It happened more than you’d think. Many sought her solace. I have continued to pray the Rosary most days ever since. It guided me through the first year after the fire, eventually guiding me back home to both Chicago and the religion of my youth, culminating in my registering as a parishioner at the same church where I married my husband back in 1998.

And now, after twenty-eight years of marriage to this on again, off again Catholic, my husband is getting confirmed Catholic tomorrow during Easter Vigil. One of 76 people in our parish alone. The Diocese of Chicago estimates it will confirm over 1000 total this weekend, a 25% increase since last year, which was already an increase over the year before that.

It’s not only here in Chicago. Manhattan is seeing a surge of baptisms this weekend. So is Los Angelos. So is France, where a record 21,386 people are expected to be baptized at Easter Vigil tomorrow.

There are so many reasons for this momentum toward the church, but that is also another essay. This essay is about today, in my house, where my husband and I are preparing for him to receive the sacraments. We’ve been to church twice this week and the place has been packed. The confessional lines are long. It’s so strange to see this energy, this vital elan in a place I once so firmly rejected as out of touch and beneath me as an intellectual. The thing is, I thought I didn’t need the church or my faith. I was better than this old-fashioned superstition. I was great just the way I was—flaws and all.

Besides, well behaved women never make history, right?

Yet here’s the irony of it all...back in September of 2020, while standing in the ash of all I’d ever owned, something inside of me split in two and I came face-to-face with the fact that the person I’d worshipped all along was me, and all my desires as well as my feelings and thoughts. I claimed to be on the path of enlightenment, but really all I did was create a cult of one.

Me. Me. Me.

Looking around at the devastation, every house gone in all directions, trees burned to the tippy tops, the forest floor nothing but ash, I realized that life is actually all about us.

Everyone.

What then, is truth? For me, the truth became clear that I’m incomplete without religious community. That my pursuit of God by myself and on my own terms was narcissism. That when two or more are gathered, there is more of everything. That if God is in all religions, it was foolish to reject the one I’d be given at birth. Why appropriate someone else’s? But most interesting was the revelation that I’m not that great of a person. I need the structure of religion as well as a community of believers with which to share the experience. Actually, I don’t need it, I LONG for it.

And here’s the real kicker, I’m also loud, opinionated, and bossy and in addition to God, I need manners. Etiquette is something else we’ve thrown out in society and that’s not good for a girl like me and honestly, not good for anyone. Everyone is shouting their truth, but what if the truth is we need etiquette because otherwise society will become a room full of preschoolers without any teacher present.

Religion isn’t meant to be a tool to tell others what to do, it’s meant refine our own hearts, to make us become more like God. In the same fashion, etiquette isn’t about following old, outdated rules that stifle our creativity (whatever that is, let’s be honest, most of our thoughts and ideas aren’t that great), rather; etiquette is about showing others that they matter even more than our egos. The people around us matter more than our opinions.

They matter even more than we do.

Perhaps then, that is the only truth left in this world of virtual communities, where we can’t even tell if someone is a bot or not. A world where people cut loved ones out of their lives because they voted for a different liar in a sea of liars all lying claiming to have the only truth.

“Quid est veritas?”

Pilate would go on to strip and scourge Jesus, wrap him in a purple robe and crown him in thorns before thrusting him out before the angry crowd, declaring, “Ecce homo!”

Behold the man.

As I reflect on Good Friday and prepare myself to stand with my husband tomorrow in the cathedral with 75 of his companions and a crowd of our own, I realize that this is perhaps the most important thing for me to focus on right now, beholding the human in front of me.

We don’t see one another anymore. All eyes are in our phones, in our laps, turned away from our shared humanity. This is a dangerous place to be. What if the truth were this simple, that all we need to do is find our manners and look at one another. Truly behold the other without judgement because honestly, whatever standard we hold ourselves to, it’s not enough. None of us will ever be enough.

Yet all of us are capable of beholding others, even if the other is in pain. Even if they are bleeding, hurting, poor, alone, or angry. It’s easy to behold the beautiful, not so much the person yelling at you.

This is what Christ did on Good Friday. He beheld the people, step by step, with a cross on his back, through a brutal death, while his friends fled and soldiers mocked him. I never liked the whole Crucifixion thing until I understood what it meant to be empty.

To be empty is to be free.

May you find peace this Easter season and may you truly behold the men and women in your midst. Love them, forgive them, and honor them.

All of them.