When Christ complained against the Pharisees about their hypocrisy with these words: “Now you Pharisees make clean the outside of the cup and of the platter, but your inside is full of rapine and iniquity,” (Lk 11,39) we are strongly reminded of the danger of hypocrisy that can easily enter into our lives. We should be ready to protect ourselves from it, but learn also how to differentiate it from our need for discretion in our lives.
To put it bluntly, we can only be in the truth when we are with God. Outside of him, let’s wish ourselves sheer luck, because the most likely thing to happen is to slip from the truth. It´s like chasing the wind. For all the excitement and advantages a Godless pursuit of truth gives, everything will just turn out to be vanity.
And so, prayer is a must. It’s what vitally and existentially unites us with God. Without it, we will just be on our own, an easy prey to our own weaknesses, let alone, the temptations around.
We should regularly examine ourselves to see if we are still with God, guided by the faith he shares with us, or we are already relying on our own human powers alone, that can only do so much.
To distinguish between hypocrisy and discretion would require us to have a proper understanding of what truth is, where to find it and how to find it. It is also a matter of how and when to present it.
It also involves the question of motives. Truthfulness and discretion are not just a matter of producing facts and data, blabbering them indiscriminately. They necessarily have to consider the intentions and the circumstances also.
Most importantly, truthfulness and discretion will always uphold charity even if in a given moment such effort would involve a lot of sacrifice. It’s charity that would dictate the terms of discretion in telling the truth. Hypocrisy fails in this requirement. (Fr. Roy Cimagala)
