Our modern day Pinocchios and their rhinoplasties

They are experts in breaking the eighth commandment
 
Some 136 years ago, the famous character Pinocchio was born in Italy. It was in Rome, Dec. 22, 1882, when a children’s publication with the title “Giornale per i bambini,” published Carlo Lorenzini’s children's novel, “The Adventures of Pinocchio.”
 
Lorenzini, better known by his pen name Carlo Collodi, gave us the story of the old woodcarver and marionette maker, Geppetto, a form for the Italian Giuseppe (Joseph), who carved out of wood a boy who he named Pinocchio. One element of the story was how Pinocchio’s nose would grow whenever he told a lie.
 
We have many Pinnochios today, probably more than ever before in history, but with one major difference. All our modern-day Pinocchios are experts at lying, very convincing as liars, and they all have had rhinoplasties, so we can’t see they are lying. Every lie will disregard, disassemble and destroy the value of truth and is an offense to our God of beauty, goodness and truth. Lies undermine our relationship with God and one another.
 
God is the source of all truth. His Word is truth and His law is truth. Since God is true, and his greatest truth is our Lord and savior Jesus Christ, then it follows that every disciple is called to live in the fullness of truth.
 
Paragraph 2466 of the Catechism of the Catholic Church reminds us, “The disciple of Jesus continues in his word to know ‘the truth (that) will make you free’ and that sanctifies. To follow Jesus is to live in ‘the spirit of truth,’ whom the Father sends in his name and who leads ‘into all the truth.’ To his disciples, Jesus teaches the unconditional love of truth: ‘Let what you say be simply yes or no.’”
 
The eighth commandment, that prohibits lying, is not limited to venial sins! Our current culture seems to be addicted to lies and doesn’t think twice about it. True leadership begins with truth because it is the basis of love.
 
You shall not bear false witness against your neighbor (Ex 20:16)
The Catechism introduces this commandment in paragraph 2464: “The eighth commandment forbids misrepresenting the truth in our relations with others. This moral prescription flows from the vocation of the holy people to bear witness to their God who is the truth and wills the truth. Offenses against the truth express by word or deed a refusal to commit oneself to moral uprightness: they are fundamental infidelities to God and, in this sense, they undermine the foundations of the covenant.”
 
Every disciple should be in love with truth, Veritas in Latin. To love truth is to love God. Truth or truthfulness is a virtue! It consists in living lives based on actual reality and not alternate realities of our own convenience. We must show ourselves true in our actions and in our speech. Our lives must always guard against duplicity, dissimulation and deception. True followers of Jesus Christ are constantly watchful to avoid paths of hypocrisy that weaken our witness of the Lord and contradict His Good News, which is true news not fake news.
 
Jesus is the way, the truth and the life. To break the eighth commandment can mean that we have gone astray, drowned in lies and are dead. No truth, no peace, love or life. Maybe we can learn something from Pinocchio.