UNABASHED HONESTY (The religious life risks becoming a theater of many masks but few genuine faces)

 



 

 Lately, I have been turning over the concept of hypocrisy—a thorny and, it must be said, rather unfashionable subject. In particular, I’ve been pondering whether there might be space for what one might term a kind of “healthy hypocrisy.” Admittedly, this is an unlikely notion, and one that seems to teeter perilously close to oxymoron. Yet, in its more redeeming guise, could such a paradoxical posture allow for a certain moral pliancy, a flexibility that might avoid the brittle rigours of absolute consistency? It’s an unsettling thought, but perhaps worth exploring.

    Who holds the moral authority to issue reproach? Let him who is without sin cast the first stone. My musings have been prompted, in part, by a return to Luigi Pirandello, particularly his exploration of masks and faces in the phenomenology of theatre. Of all his works, Uno, Nessuno e Centomila strikes me as especially apposite. “You will learn at your own expense,” Pirandello writes, “that, over the long course of life, you will encounter many masks and few faces.” How often, I wonder, do we find ourselves caught in this duality? To others, we are not always who we think we are; nor, perhaps, who we aspire to be.

My engagement with Pirandello has never been casual—his provocations are not so easily dismissed. His works offer an unsettling mirror, reflecting the inconsistencies and contradictions that are the essence of human life. But can his insights still resonate with those who, like myself, are bound by religious vows? It’s a question worth asking. His relentless probing of identity and relationality holds up an uncompromising lens to those of us striving—however imperfectly—to live lives of mutual care and solidarity. Emmanuel Levinas summons us to a vocative reduction—the call to responsibility for the other. For those of us within the religious life, such a call ought to be second nature. Yet how often do we slip into something far less noble: the pursuit of moral superiority, or worse, the unkind reproach cloaked in piety? It is precisely here—in the dissonance between our lofty ideals and our all-too-human shortcomings—that Pirandello’s vision proves most pertinent. His works do not merely expose the masks we wear; they compel us to confront the truth that we are, perhaps, both mask and face in equal measure.

Consider, for instance, this passage from Pirandello—a meditation that merits quoting in full:

The idea that others saw in me one that was not the I whom I knew, one whom they alone could know, as they looked at me from without, with eyes that were not my own, eyes that conferred upon me an aspect destined to remain always foreign to me, although it was one that was in me, one that was my own to them (a “mine,” that is to say, that was not for me!)—a life into which, although it was my own, I had no power to penetrate—this idea gave me no rest. [1]

    There is no easy comfort in these words, no soothing balm for the discomfort they reveal. Yet, Pirandello’s insight challenges us to consider that living authentically requires inhabiting the tension of these contradictions. Perhaps, to truly live in community is to embrace the tensions that naturally arise within it. This is not offered as a critique of my peers or a wry dismissal of my elders. Rather, it is an unflinching acknowledgment: the religious life risks becoming a theater of many masks but few genuine faces. The unease of this truth should not be shunned but embraced. Only by confronting this discomfort—by dwelling in the tension between our identities and our truths—can we begin to grasp the deeper meaning of brotherhood within our communities.

    But can we bear the weight of such honesty, with all its discomfort and vulnerability? If we cannot, are we truly living as brothers, striving to see and be seen—or are we content to remain strangers, bound together by pretense rather than trust? And if we choose the latter, what does it say about the community we claim to build, and the selves we fear to reveal?

 


Hemen A. Emmanuel O.S.A

Colegio Mayor Mendel. C. del Rector Royo-Villanova, 6, Moncloa - Aravaca, 28040 Madrid

Madrid, España.   


[1] Pirandello, Luigi. One, No One, and One Hundred Thousand. , Eridanos Press, 1990. Distributed by D.R. Godine. Internet Archive, [https://archive.org/details/onenooneonehundr0000pira]. Accessed [22/01/55].

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