What does it cost to tell the truth?
That is the question today’s readings place before us.
Not whether the truth is popular.
Not whether it is convenient.
But whether we are willing to stand by it when it becomes costly.
Because truth always has a price.
Jeremiah stands before the priests, the prophets and the people.
His crime?
He has preached exactly what God commanded him to preach.
He warned the people to repent.
He called them back to the covenant.
He spoke words they did not want to hear.
Their response is immediate:
“This man deserves the sentence of death.”
Notice that they do not prove Jeremiah wrong.
They simply want him silenced.
That has always been one of the easiest ways to deal with truth.
If you cannot refute the message, attack the messenger.
Jeremiah’s answer is remarkable.
He does not soften his words.
He does not apologise.
He does not bargain.
He simply says:
“The Lord sent me to prophesy against this house and this city all the words you have heard.”
Then he adds:
“Amend your ways and your deeds, and obey the voice of the Lord.”
In other words, the problem is not the preacher.
The problem is that the people have refused to listen to God.
The Gospel gives us another prophet.
John the Baptist.
He too tells the truth.
Herod has taken his brother’s wife.
John says plainly:
“It is not lawful for you to have her.”
He does not invent a new morality because the king is powerful.
He does not excuse sin because it belongs to someone important.
The law of God is the law of God.
For the rich.
For the poor.
For rulers.
For subjects.
For priests.
For everyone.
John loses his freedom.
Then he loses his life.
His head is brought into a banquet hall as the reward for a foolish promise and a vindictive heart.
It is one of the darkest scenes in the Gospels.
Yet who do we remember today?
Herod’s palace has long since crumbled into dust.
The dancing has ended.
The applause has faded.
But the Church still honours John the Baptist as a martyr because he valued truth more than his own life.
The world remembers celebrities for a season.
The Church remembers saints for eternity.
There is an important lesson here.
The greatest danger is not persecution.
The greatest danger is compromise.
A compass is useful because it always points north.
Imagine a compass that decided to point south whenever north became unpopular.
It would be useless.
So too with the Church.
Our task is not to invent the truth.
Our task is to point faithfully to Christ, whether the world applauds or objects.
If we lose the truth, we lose the very thing we were sent to proclaim.
That is why today’s saint is such a fitting companion.
St Alphonsus Liguori lived in an age when many people saw God only as a harsh judge.
Others responded by making the moral life so demanding that ordinary people despaired.
Alphonsus did neither.
He preached the whole truth.
He never called sin good.
But neither did he leave sinners without hope.
Again and again he led people to the confessional, reminding them that God’s mercy is greater than their sin when they truly repent.
He understood that the truth without charity can crush a soul, but charity without truth cannot save it.
Christ gives us both.
St Alphonsus also had a profound love for the Blessed Sacrament.
He wrote that of all devotions, after the sacraments themselves, adoration of Our Lord in the Eucharist is the dearest to God and the most profitable for us.
He knew that courage to live the truth does not come from strong personalities.
It comes from staying close to Christ.
The martyrs were not naturally fearless men and women.
They were men and women strengthened by grace.
Perhaps most of us will never be asked to die for the faith.
But every day we are asked to live for it.
Every day we choose whether to tell the truth or remain silent.
Whether to forgive.
Whether to keep the commandments when it is inconvenient.
Whether to defend the sanctity of marriage, the dignity of every human life, the sanctity of Sunday, and the reality of the Eucharist, even when these teachings are unpopular.
Martyrdom is not always red.
Often it is white.
It is the daily dying to ourselves that prepares us, should God ever ask more.
At every Mass we stand before the same Christ whom Jeremiah proclaimed, whom John the Baptist defended, and whom St Alphonsus adored.
The world still changes its opinions.
The Gospel does not.
The world still tells us to adapt the truth.
Christ still says,
“If you love me, keep my commandments.”
So let us ask the prayers of St Alphonsus Liguori.
May we have the courage of Jeremiah to speak God’s word faithfully, the integrity of John the Baptist to refuse every compromise, and the confidence of the saints to trust that no sacrifice made for Christ is ever lost.
For the truth may cost us something in this life.
But it leads to the One who is Himself the Way, the Truth, and the Life.
St. Mary's, St. John Bosco and St. Edward's 