On the day I began this essay, in the Kyrie at the beginning of Mass, the priest prayed, “In the consolation of truth, Lord have mercy”.
What is the consolation of truth?
Just what truth is consoling? Is it scientific truth, which consoles us through its technological implementation?
The first principle of science, which I recall learning, is that of Archimedes, ‘A body immersed in a fluid is buoyed up by a force equal to the weight of the fluid displaced’. Its implementation is certainly convenient whenever we get into a rowboat or board a cruise ship. Daily, we are advantaged by its technological application, which automatically shuts off the fill valves of our toilets.
Yet, no matter how impressive the truths of science may appear through technology, they are external to the human person. The ease they provide via technology can hardly be labeled, consolation.
If you’re like me you might mistake the melancholy of nostalgia for the consolation of truth, especially if it is roused by song, accompanied by a glass of beer. When I read the phrase, ‘jobs that suddenly became redundant’, in a listing of some vicissitudes of life by Paul Oakes, I thought of the melody and the lyric,
By trade I was a cooper, lost out to redundancy
Like my house which fell to progress, my trade’s a memory
As ingratiating as is the melancholy of nostalgia. The emotion of melancholy is not the consolation of truth.
The consolation of truth is the realization that no matter what apparent evils occur, goodness triumphs.
The consolation of truth would seem to glimmer in philosophy. Yet, there, it is not complete.
The fullness of consolation is the Truth of Divine Revelation, eminently in the Incarnation, Sacrifice and Resurrection of our Lord, the Word of God, who dwells among us.
The Incarnation
Through Mary’s fiat, the Word becomes flesh.
Human nature cannot exist in itself. However, human nature can exist in each of a multiplicity of individuals, fully distinct from one another. This multiplicity is possible through the existential principle of matter, a principle of differentiation. Thus too, the second Person of the Blessed Trinity could become fully man in the flesh through the cooperation of Mary.
In the Incarnation of God, Mary is the Cause of our Joy. The truth of the Incarnation is not simply consoling, it is bursting with joy. God deigns to raise us to be his children and heirs of heaven (Rom 8:14-17). Through sanctifying grace we will know God in a beatific vision, nothing like the way we know only through matter as we do in this life. Yet, it is matter, the Incarnation, which makes all of this possible.
Surely, this showering of supernatural gifts upon us is the consolation of Truth, the Word made flesh. Goodness triumphs not only spiritually, but in matter through the Incarnation.
The Sacrifice
Our Lord came not simply to dwell among us, but to redeem us from our sins. John the Baptist identified Jesus of Nazareth as the Lamb of God, who takes away the sin of the world (Jn 2:29). Jesus lays down his life for his sheep (Jn 10:15). His is a true sacrifice because his life is not taken from him, he freely offers it (Jn 10:18).
It is extreme irony that the infinite God should empty himself by taking the form a servant in order to redeem a slave (Phl 2: 7). This is the consolation of Truth.
The Resurrection
Jesus’ resurrection from the dead completes his sacrifice. Raising us to immortal life is the goal of his sacrifice. His own resurrection from the dead in his glorified by body is the warrantee of the forgiveness of our sins and our restoration to sanctifying grace and ultimate beatitude. It is our consolation to share in the victory of Truth over sin and death through his loving mercy.
The Mass
The Incarnation, Sacrifice and Resurrection of our Lord are not confined to the distant past, out of our reach. The Word of God dwells among us in these redemptive acts affording us personal, material experience of them. This is the Mass.
In the Mass the material offerings we bring, namely bread and wine, become the Lamb of God Incarnate.
Jesus’ offering of his life through the separate consecration of the bread and wine is the same, singular sacrifice as that of the Last Supper and of Calvary. The sacrifice of the Lamb for the forgiveness of sins is materially present to us in the Mass as much as it would have been at Calvary Hill, were we there. But, we were not there, we are here. It is here and now that the one and only sacrifice for the forgiveness of our sins is materially present to us in the Mass.
By virtue of the properties of his resurrected, glorified body, we receive the fruit of the forgiveness of our sins, wrought by the sacrifice, in Holy Communion. We fully participate by partaking of the Lamb sacrificed for our sins.
The Mass is our full participation in the consolation of Truth, who is also the Way and the Life. The consolation is not simply due to an abstract judgment or thought on our part. It is our material union with the one who saves us from our sins.
Gratitude
The consolation of Truth prompts gratitude in us.
Fully complete in his own being as the Blessed Trinity, God chose to share truth, goodness and existence through creation. He created a spectrum of beings from the angelic pure spirits to inanimate matter. He created material entities with vegetative life and others with sentient life. The strangest of all of his creation were beings having both sentient life and spiritual life.
Then to be even more magnanimous, God chose to create the grace of sharing in his own life with the angels and men. Not taking Adam’s, No, for an answer to his offer of ultimate beatitude, God created Mary.
Most strangely, God created me. I exist.
The consolation of the truth is the mystery of redemption from sin, which elicits our adoring gratitude. The consolation of truth has its culmination in this life in our adoring gratitude in the Mass. In life after death, heaven is the Mass in the perfection of beatitude, our supernatural sharing in the existential perfection of Truth and Love, our sharing in the life of the Blessed Trinity.
In the consolation of truth, Lord have mercy.
