The Truth is Inconvenient

HOMILY | Haggai 1:1-8 | Luke 9:7-9

Herod must have found it difficult to be around John the Baptist because his way of life is at odds with the message which the Baptist spoke about all his life. I believe he was traumatised by the preaching of John that he was insecure, he was always anxious, that he was always threatened despite he is a person of authority. This is because the truth means insecurity, it means anxiety, it means threat, it means trauma for people who prefer to live in deception.

Of course you know Herod lived in lewd and corrupt life. The height of which is his illicit affair with Herodias, his brother’s wife. He was at fault. He lived a life at odds with the values of the Kingdom and twofold preaching of John the Baptist is to announce the Good News and how many times did he denounce the bad news.

In the past few days, we have heard a child 16 year old child from Sweden. Her name is Greta Thunberg, and she has been the focus of International media and governments the past few days. Last week, she was in the United States, spoke before the US congress about the risks of Climate Change. She was advocating climate action with the doctrine that we are at the threshold of an era leading to extinction.

• The last Ice Age has been ushered by massive heat waves. And we pretty much experience that ourselves today.

• The continued rise of temperature around the world,

• the fast melting of the massive glaciers in both poles,

• recently the massive heat waves in Europe,

• the massive forest fires in Amazon started August 10, and some major parts of Africa a week after that,

• and this week we hear the wildfires in Indonesia.

These are the contents of her message. All of them are beginning to be felt. As a matter of fact, the haze from the fire in Indonesia is so massive that it now reaches Cebu as reported last September 18. Yet there are people who refuse to heed her message. They refuse to acknowledge the truth and its impending consequences.

There are people and world leaders who deny the reality of changing global patterns. Is that not unfortunate? Doesn’t it seem ironic that a humanity which upholds science and scientific discoveries now deny the scientific reality of climate change? To Deny and refuse the truth? Then we are no different from Herod.

I guess some deny the truth like Herod, some refuse to believe the truth because it is uncomfortable. But the environmental crisis we now face is an inconvenient truth. Measures had to be done. For us, we need to have the resolve for the truth and begin from there. Be resolved that climate change is real and we are all at risk.

Pope Francis tells us. The pace of consumption, waste and environmental change has so stretched the planet’s capacity that our contemporary lifestyle, unsustainable as it is, can only precipitate catastrophes, such as those which even now periodically occur in different areas of the world. We have chosen a way of life which is detrimental to the environment, and we will surely pay the price.

Our first reading in this sense reminds us: Consider your ways!