How we can truly be sincere

By Fr. Roy Cimagala

TO get to the point without beating around the bush, the only way we can truly be sincere with everyone and with everything is when we are with God who, after all, knows all things and knows them always with charity, justice, mercy, prudence and the like.

We have to understand that sincerity is a matter of having a proper relation first with God, since only then would we manage to be sincere with everyone and with everything.

When we have this understanding of sincerity, we would know that our relation with others and with everything else, to be true and sincere, would not just involve knowing them, which mean they are in us. It would also involve loving them which would enable us to be in them, just like God is in all of us. Like anything else in our life, to be sincere is a relational affair. It’s not just a personal, individualistic or egocentric affair.

That’s just how the cookie crumbles in our life. We need to be in others, as well as the others need to be in us. We are meant for communion among ourselves. And this can happen if we give full and proper play to our knowing and loving, using our intelligence and will to reflect the inner dynamism of the life of God whose image and likeness we are.

God is in an eternal process of knowing and loving, giving rise to the three persons of the Blessed Trinity, with the Father as the knower, the Son as the known, and the Holy Spirit as the love between the Father and the Son.

With this inmost dynamism of his eternal knowing and loving, God also gets to know and love everything else outside of himself. There is nothing that exists that is outside his knowledge and loving, though in varying degrees and ways.

When we have this understanding of sincerity, we would be able to overcome whatever fear or shame we may have that would prevent us from being sincere. We would be able to know how to deal with our unavoidable biases and prejudices, our differences and conflicts in such a way that we would be sincere to each other.

With this kind of sincerity, we would be able to broaden our mind and heart in such a way that we can go beyond the here and now, the material, sensible and natural aspects of our life and enter into the spiritual and supernatural dimensions of our life.

To be sincere and to be in the truth goes further than mere facts and data. Much less is truth about a certain view or choice that may be supported by a majority of the people. Truth can only be found in God when the Spirit of Truth shows us what truth is.

We are reminded of this very important aspect of our life when in the gospel of St. John, Christ said that the Spirit of Truth “will guide you to all truth. He will not speak on his own, but he will speak what he hears and will declare to you the things that are coming.” (Jn 16,13)

To know the truth and to be in the truth are a matter of being discerning of what the Holy Spirit tells and shows us. In short, we cannot know and be sincere and in the truth unless we follow what the Spirit tells us.

Email: roycimagala@gmail.com