Experiencing the Truth

Lest somebody believe that writing the journey to Truth is an experience is so much theological clap-trap and the making of yet another abstraction, I refer you to the story, related by NCR's John Allen, of Oscar Osorio (not be confused with the former president of El Salvador of the same name), a Honduran Catholic lay preacher and, as such, a star of Central American television.

Orsorio's efforts, unlike Catholics in other parts of the region, enjoy the support of his bishop in the Honduran capital of Tegucigalpa, in the person of Oscar Andreas Cardinal Rodriguez Maradiga, who said of the Church in Latin America in an interview with NCR earlier this week, "Our current pastoral model is exhausted." According to Allen, Osorio and Cardinal Rodriguez favor "a program of missionary outreach led by lay people, and rooted in Scripture." Said the Cardinal: "We lost our people by the Word, and we have to recover them by the Word."

After an initial conversion experience, "Osorio went to Mexico for a formation program, where he had another brush with what he considers divine intervention.

"'I was at an all-night vigil before the Blessed Sacrament when I heard a voice saying, "I need you,"' Osorio said. 'At first, I thought it was the priest speaking, so I said, ‘What do you need?’ He just told me to be quiet. Then I closed my eyes and I heard the voice again, and I told the priest what had happened."

"The next morning, Osorio said, he expected the priest to explain the theological significance of the experience. Instead, he said, the priest simply told him: 'Learn how to listen to God.'"

The journey to Truth, then, is more than an amorphous experience; it is a meeting in and through our experiences with the One who is the Truth, and the Way, and the Life, Jesus Christ. Especially during this Lent, let's listen to Him.