Pilate's World

This past weekend Catholics had the Long Gospel, a standard practice on Palm Sunday where the Passion of Christ is gone over in detail. One part of that Gospel has always stood out to me. When Pontius Pilate asked Jesus what his purpose was Christ answered, "I came to testify to the truth." Pilate responded with disdain, "What is truth?" This is exactly what the world says when confronted with Jesus, or with any idea of Truth.

Pilate represents the World, which wants no truth. Christ more than represents truth but is rather Truth Itself. And that is why the world rejects him.

The World wants to do what it wants to do and does not want to have to justify itself.  Christ challenges that: certain things are what they are no matter what you think (or want to think). So the World mocks Him: What is Truth?

Save your tongue if your first reaction is to ask, who's truth? That's only childish gainsaying. The question is not and never can be that. The real question, to turn it back on you, World, is, again, What is Truth? What is really real, and what is really false? What do we do with what knowledge the answers to those questions give us?

If you aren't seeking real, honest truth, you're playing to vanity, quite frankly. If you ask, like Pilate, what is truth, you mock and deny truth. Do so if you wish. But the price will be dear if you choose such, as the beginning of all the vice in human history can be seen in that small exchange between God and the World. "I came to testify; What is Truth?" Will you seek Truth, or will you deny it? There is nothing else.

Good Friday 2017

Today is perhaps the day of the greatest irony on our calendar. It is Good Friday, the day we Christians remember the crucifixion of out Lord Jesus Christ.

It doesn't seem that it should be called good. On the surface, the celebration (perhaps veneration is a better word) of someone's death, particularly a rather gruesome one, seems odd to say the least. Yet that is an interpretation based solely on earthly terms. When you consider that the great Divinity was involved, it casts an entirely different light on the situation.

God sent His only Son to be humiliated, to suffer and die horribly, for us. Such a great act cannot be seen except as fantastic. How could a sacrifice of that magnitude be seen in other than a positive light?

We cannot rightly see it any other way. Remember what Aquinas teaches: Christ is either lunatic, liar, or Lord. He Himself gives us no option but to answer the question in that frame. He claimed He could forgive others' sins: sins committed (on the surface) against other people by other people. That itself is effrontery or lunacy or even diabolical if He is not part of the Godhead. If He cannot actually do that, if He does not really have that power, then He lies or is insane. If He lies or is insane, then we cannot trust anything else He may say or teach or do. It's that simple.

Yet if we choose the example which faith recommends, if we see Him as Lord of all based on His actions in life and death as well as through the testimony of his trusted companions, then we see the need for praise and holy fear which His death illustrates to us. We understand what that death means: that the God of all humanity will not forsake humanity to her own selfish desires. He will give us an out, if you will, by living the greatest love of all: to give one's life for one's friends.

When the greatest One does that, what choice do we have but to call it Good?