Over the years I have seen that the one essential virtue is honesty. Honesty is important because it is what relationships are built on. Honesty creates closeness in a relationship. When someone speaks truthfully it enables you to trust them. You simply can’t have a warm and intimate relationship with someone you don’t trust.

Honesty provokes communion. It creates an atmosphere conducive to friendship. By removing the fear of being manipulated and deceived, it allows us to drop our guard and be known for who we really are. I don’t have to hide what I know will be handled with care. When two people are in this state of mind, communion is inevitable.

In a sense, honesty is “keeping the commandment” of others. It is staying loyal by not having a hidden agenda that may injure them. This act of love elicits love back and enables others to disclose themselves to us. And disclosure is the fuel of communion.

It just so happens that communion is the stuff happiness is made of. Poets and prophets have forever told us that real meaning in life is found in friendship. It’s simply an established fact that life is empty without someone to share it with. Our greatest joys, and sorrows, come in the form of people. Honesty creates communion and communion creates happiness.

This remarkable little formula – honesty, communion, happiness – is the key to our relationships: father and son, brother and sister, husband and wife, and every other relationship. And not surprisingly, it holds true with our relationship with God.

John 14:21 “He who has My commandments and keeps them is the one who loves Me; and he who loves Me will be loved by My Father, and I will love him and will disclose Myself to him.”

John 17:3 “This is eternal life, that they may know You, the only true God, and Jesus Christ whom You have sent.”