2: Veritas and Aletheia - The Appearance of the Appearing
2: Veritas and Aletheia - The Appearance of the Appearing
Where shall I begin? I will begin with this story.
In February of 2013, I venerated the shin bone of St. Mary Magdalene. The relic was on tour in the United States. Six months later, Mary Magdalene appeared to me in a dream. The apparition did not announce herself by name. She did not speak a word. I was in a crowded room when suddenly everyone dispersed instantly except one, the lady. She robed herself in ancient attire, the style we would imagine women wore in Our Lord's time and place. By intuition, I understood that the lady was holy. She looked into my eyes and smiled. Then, I woke up.
After waking, I knew her as Magdalene by an unfolding awareness that preceded and then embraced me. She had appeared as one with primacy to a hidden story. As I continued writing in the spirit of the combined hearts of St. Joan and St. Thérèse, Magdalene’s story unfolded as a transcendent map of meaning through a kingdom with which I felt familiar but had not formally traversed. Through empathic devotion to Mary Magdalene, always guided by Joan and Thérèse, the mystical kingdom emerged as an ever-appearing phenomenon. It emerged out of glimmering concealment behind the figure of Magdalene on the shores of Provence. The Kingdom held within itself Magdalene’s mode of being as its form shining through Our Lady’s relationship with the Holy Trinity. The phenomenon of the kingdom centered itself on my transcendent event horizon. I felt immersed in apprehension of something that needed to be put into words.
Gathering my phenomenological insights with Joan and Thérèse, Magdalene beckoned me to a transformational mode of being in Christ, a comportment with Logos that is primordial to all Being and is Being itself. Through her, Veritas as the Platonic metaphysics of the Church lit up the emerging kingdom as Aletheia, an unconcealment of truth. She led me into the story over which she held primacy by the grace of Jesus Christ at whose feet she had sat in inceptual wonder. Her Aletheian charism was a grace from God through the Immaculate Heart of Mary. Magdalene’s charism and the story it revealed reconstituted my being in Jesus Christ - heart, mind, and soul. Following the Trail of the Dogmatic Creed to the kingdom through time with Joan and Thérèse, I had been prepared to receive the phenomenon. Joan and Thérèse had been guiding me towards that horizon over the years.
God calls us through the aletheian “appearance of the appearing” in union with the saints. We respond to the call to journey not only through the Veritas of metaphysics but through the Aletheian unfolding of a phenomenon God places before us. The combined hearts of Joan and Thérèse represent both Veritas and Aletheia before, behind, and beside us as we follow the soft light marking Magdalene’s map. Veritas protects the primacy of the story, the unfolding of Aletheia, by the marked Trail of the Dogmatic Creed revealed by God through the Church. Joan and Thérèse guide us through our upright heart of goodwill in union with the magisterial teachings of the Holy Catholic Church.
“Let the hearts of those who seek the LORD rejoice.’ Although man can forget God or reject him, He never ceases to call every man to seek him, so as to find life and happiness. But this search for God demands of man every effort of intellect, a sound will, ‘an upright heart’, as well as the witness of others who teach him to seek God.” (CCC, para 30.)