To testify to the truth

Is 52,1 3-53,12; Ps 30; Heb 4,14-16; 5,7-9; Jn 18,33-40
19 APRIL

Truth is the eternal nature of God. God created man in the image and likeness of his divine nature. He not only created him, he also showed him the path of truth to be followed, but also the way of falsehood to avoid, if he wants to stay in life. If man wants to live he must always obey his nature according to the truth of the contained nature, for having been revealed, in every Word of his God and Lord. Jesus came among us, not only to bring us the Word of the Father to the top of its perfection and divine beauty, in which all his eternal truth is contained, but also to show us how one obeys his own nature, and above all to bring us back into the truth of nature, lost with sin, making us, in the Holy Spirit, partakers of the divine nature. Only Christ can give these gifts: the truth at the height of its beauty, the exemplariness in the perfection of obedience to the truth, the participation of the divine nature; only He gives them. But they can be lived only in Christ, with Christ and for Christ. Everything comes from him. Everything is lived in him. Christ is taken away, we are without any truth, but also without any possibility of obeying the truth of nature. Without Christ we remain the old nature of sin that obeys the law of sin. Christ is the Different, the eternal Necessary and the Indispensable One of humanity. Everything might become useless to man tomorrow. This might never be said of Christ. Jesus is taken away from the life of a man, he is made a machine of sin and death. The Only Son of the Father, his Eternal Word, becoming flesh, assumes all our history. History is made of choices. Every moment Jesus attests us that He is the Truth from the Truth and for the Truth. In this sense he is the witness of the truth. He is incarnate eternal Truth that in history, through his body, his soul and his spirit, always chooses the truth of the Father. His life is this uninterrupted choice, even in the smallest things, of the truth of the Father. He made of his existence a perennial obedience to the voice of his God.

So Pilate went back into the praetorium and summoned Jesus and said to him, “Are you the King of the Jews?” Jesus answered, “Do you say this on your own or have others told you about me?” Pilate answered, “I am not a Jew, am I? Your own nation and the chief priests handed you over to me. What have you done?” Jesus answered, “My kingdom does not belong to this world. If my kingdom did belong to this world, my attendants (would) be fighting to keep me from being handed over to the Jews. But as it is, my kingdom is not here.” So Pilate said to him, “Then you are a king?” Jesus answered, “You say I am a king. For this I was born and for this I came into the world, to testify to the truth. Everyone who belongs to the truth listens to my voice.” Pilate said to him, “What is truth?” When he had said this, he again went out to the Jews and said to them, “I find no guilt in him. But you have a custom that I release one prisoner to you at Passover. Do you want me to release to you the King of the Jews?” They cried out again, “Not this one but Barabbas!” Now Barabbas was a revolutionary.

The thoughts of hearts are revealed before Jesus. Who chooses his truth, chooses the Father, loves the Father, loves the truth of his nature. Whoever does not choose his truth, does not love the Father, does not choose him and does not love the truth of his being. Today, first of all, Pilate is called to choose Christ and his truth, his justice and his holiness. He must choose the truth of Christ which is his innocence and his being without sin. He renounces this choice. He gives up what is his to the crowd. The crowd also renounces the choice of truth and lets itself be influenced, guided and manoeuvred by the chief priests. It chooses Barabbas, the murderer in place of the Innocent, the wicked instead of the Just and the sinner instead of the Holy One of God. Jesus had told Pilate: since you are not from the truth, but from yourself and from who gives you power, you might never listen to the truth. Even the crowd is not from the truth, because it is from the thought of the chief priests. It too might never hear the truth of the heart. Whoever wants to listen to the truth must be from the truth and one is from the truth in one way: if he is obedient to every Word that comes out of the mouth of God. Jesus is from the Word of the Father, he is the Word of the Father and always listen to the truth and remains the truth of the Father among us. He lives of Truth. He is the Truth.

Mother of God, Angels and Saints make us from the Truth of Christ in his divine and human truth.