Denver, Colo., Dec 2, 2018 / 14:29 pm
"Insincerity was an evil which sprang up within the Church from the first," wrote Blessed John Henry Newman in 1839. "Ananias and Simon were not open opposers of the Apostles, but false brethren."
Any of us, he said, can affect a certain kind of religiosity without sincerity, any of us can be tempted to put on the trappings of faith without the interior disposition. Any of us can be tempted to give the appearance of love when, in truth, we do not love.
Real faith grows when we have the humility and the honesty to profess what we really believe, to speak what we really know, and to stand before God and one another as we really are.
Jesus transforms us, Newman taught, when we come before him as we are.