To Be, Rather Than to Seem

There is a Latin phrase that I like: “Esse quam videri.”Which means, “To be, rather than to seem.”In other words, it is about what’s really true and not what we pretend to be true.The little book of Jonah is a profoundly unsettling story, and one of the things it does is show us the gap between who Jonah says he is and who he actually is.It turns out that Jonah, despite what he says, is very far from being a God-fearing prophet.Reading through the book of Jonah will cause us to examine our own lives."Where is the gap between who I really am and who I pretend to be?”