Transparent Humanity - 1 June 2012

'There is nothing concealed that will not be disclosed, or hidden that will not be made known. What you have said in the dark will be heard in the daylight, and what you have whispered in the ear in the inner rooms will be proclaimed from the roofs' (Luke 12.2-3) Jesus warning against hypocrisy and human duplicity is deeply disturbing. A single word comes to mind when reflecting on the spiritual reality behind this teaching: 'transparency'. God desires for his children harmony between our behaviour in the private and public spheres of life; for there to be no discrepancy between interior attitudes, thoughts, feelings, emotions and outward expression (cf. also Luke 11.33f). We are called to transparency. There might be a mystical dimension to this, what Thomas Merton calls 'sacramental illumination' - a life offered to God through which the light of Christ shines - but it does not end there. The call to transparency must go beyond the spiritual and mystical, to touch the ethical and sociological. A transformed transparent human being is not just an ontologically static entity; an empty vase, say, that is filled with glory and light, but a dynamic creature baptised into the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ that exhibits freedom and loving service; a person in whom the virtual ideology of virtue becomes real and concrete, the heavenly earthly, and the eschatological a present phenomenon. Who I am in the inner room should be no different to who I am in the high-street.