Today is June 4, Wednesday of the Seventh Week of Easter
We read at today’s Mass, “I do not ask that you take them out of the world but that you keep them from the Evil One. They do not belong to the world any more than I belong to the world. Consecrate them in the truth. Your word is truth” (Jn 17:15-17).
How often do we wish the world were different — holier, kinder, more just? We ask, “Jesus, why isn’t the world a better place?” But Jesus doesn’t ask the Father to take us out of the world. He asks that we be consecrated in the truth. That we remain and be made holy right here — in the midst of it all.
This consecration, in truth, is the key. It’s not an escape, but a transformation.
Pope Benedict XVI reflected deeply on this in his final encyclical, Caritas in veritate, or “Charity in truth.” In it, he explores the essential relationship between love and truth. This encyclical harmonizes the themes of his earlier writings on love (Deus caritas est) and hope (Spe salvi), demonstrating how those virtues play out in everyday life.
Loving in truth
Pope Benedict reminds us that “all people feel the interior impulse to love authentically.” That desire — planted by God in every human heart — is never fully extinguished. But it must be guided. He writes, “Truth is the light that gives meaning and value to charity.” Without truth, love risks becoming sentimentality — easily distorted, easily misused.
We see this clearly today. Many public debates about morality reduce love to a vague feeling, stripped of its grounding in truth. As Pope Benedict warns, when love is detached from truth, it becomes an “empty shell.”
So today’s reflection invites us to examine our own hearts. Are our expressions of love rooted in truth? Are our convictions guided by both reason and revelation? If our love is real, it must be willing to speak the truth, even when it costs us.
Let’s pray today that our hearts may be re-consecrated in truth. That our love — our charity — may be radiant, courageous and true.
Let us pray,
Graciously grant to your Church, O merciful God, that, gathered by the Holy Spirit, she may be devoted to you with all her heart and united in purity of intent. Through our Lord Jesus Christ, your Son, who lives and reigns with you in the unity of the Holy Spirit, God, for ever and ever. Amen.
