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Gospel Reflection – Wednesday, May 28, 2025
Life and Breath: Truth
These days, we keep hearing—almost insistently—about the Spirit. It has to be repeated often, because the Gospel of John can be hard to grasp. And yet, its message can be summed up simply: life and breath, the path to Truth.
In today’s first reading from Acts, Paul—speaking with a touch of humor—talks about all the gods the Greeks worshipped, including the one they called “the unknown god.” And it is this unknown one, Paul says, who is the true God—the source of life and breath for everything. The other gods are just images, idols, temporary things without any real power. The “unknown” God is something mysterious—unseen, untouchable—and yet the most real of all, because He is the very origin of life.
The Gospel also speaks of this mystery—something the disciples are not yet ready to bear. Is it because it’s so vast, so beyond words, so overwhelming? The God who is so close and familiar is at the same time totally beyond our grasp.
Only the Spirit can lead us to the Truth, because only the Spirit is Truth.
We are surrounded by idols—things many people treat as the most real or important. But in a culture full of relativism, those idols have no substance. They might be pleasure, money, “my truth,” or feelings—but they vanish just as quickly as they appear.
We live in a world of deep contradictions: emotional sensitivity coexists with a culture of death that accepts things like abortion, war, or euthanasia without hesitation. Often, these contradictions live not only in the same society, but even in the same hearts. And we’re often told there is no absolute truth, that everything is just a social construct.
But in the end, what all of that lacks is life, lacks breath.
Because Truth is the “unknown” God—the One in whom we live, and move, and have our being. He is the One who gives us breath. And it is the Spirit who must lead us toward that Truth.