What more can I say about this extraordinary video, this moving “sincerity hour.” Perhaps it is enough to say that
Perhaps it is enough to say that these testimonies deserve to be watched and listened to, above all for their sincerity. Here, we aren’t talking about worn-out discourses launched from the pulpit, or abstract apologetics, or rabid, ideological imprecations. They are silent, full of vitality and light…authentic, concrete, lives made more beautiful, more luminous having passed through the shadow of suffering.
They are lights that arise to illuminate others who are searching and anxiously hoping for such a light. Let us not deny them this opportunity, please! To love another without counting the cost; this is a selfless act of love (as the video reminds us). Let us not be afraid of sharing testimonies like these because, thanks to their sincerity, they can rekindle a flame, give new life to the heart, guiding them towards new horizons.
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These people have risked social exposure, and for this they are examples of what it means to share an experience too big to keep hidden underneath the bushel. Their acceptation, that epiphany of depth revealed in a painful embrace, is what makes their testimonies so valid and fascinating. No Photoshop, no makeup, no wax… The ancients used the word “sincere”, meaning without wax, to refer to sculptures that, in spite of being cracked, were so beautiful that they could be left alone without any fixing, without filling their fissures with wax or other material. We could even say that their superior beauty resided in their having been able to generate such harmony even with the cracks. These sculptures reflect man with supreme eloquence, more so than any other, because they reflect man as he truly is, a tension between sin and grace.
These testimonies are very similar to those sculptures, and for this their sincerity helps us to overcome and unmask that idealization that we so often look to generate in our own lives, hoping to hide our own wounds and to avoid truly accepting those pains in the depths that eat us up on the inside. How many acts of rebellion, of aggression, of infantile mockery, etc… are not, in reality, manifestations of deeper pains that we aren’t able to confront and reconcile? Why, instead of assuming them, do we run, immerging ourselves in banal distractions, without ever getting to the bottom of it?
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We so often live hiding behind plastic facades in an idealized world of lies, which we know to be unreal (just like those classic Greek statues or, today, the world of those “perfect” Hollywood stars). Meanwhile, our heart continues to perceive that interior longing for a more authentic and reconciled life.
Today we can contemplate three living and sincere models of daily life. Models of real men. Three “sculptures” in which we can catch a glimpse of life and see our own reflection. They speak to us all from their suffering, from their cracks, showing us the light that shines through them.
