By Father Jean-Pierre Ruiz
SOMETHING SEEMS seriously out of place! We have just celebrated Thanksgiving, and according to the holiday calendar of the marketplace, Black Friday followed on its heels and Cyber Monday is coming up.
With Advent just a week away, with Christmas pageant costumes of shepherds soon to be sewn, and angel wings to be crafted, why are we hearing about Pontius Pilate on this last Sunday of the Church’s liturgical year?
On the Solemnity of our Lord Jesus Christ, King of the Universe, we reflect on a portion of the Passion according to John, a text we will read once again during the Good Friday liturgy. What’s going on? Is the Church trying to curb our enthusiasm by reminding us of a real-life villain who makes the Grinch-who-stole-Christmas seem like a good guy?
Talk about notoriety! What other first-century Roman official makes it into the celebration of Mass? We mention Pilate every time we make our profession of faith, and those of us who pray the rosary speak his name every time we pick up the beads.
Worst Claim to Fame
Familiar as his name may be, we don’t know very much about Pilate, who served as prefect of the Roman province of Judaea, from 26 to 36 AD. His claim to fame – of the very worst sort – was his role in sentencing Jesus to death on the cross. That is what earns him a mention in the Annals of the Roman historian Tacitus, who writes that Christ “suffered the extreme penalty during the reign of Tiberius at the hands of one of our procurators, Pontius Pilate.”
In the ruins of ancient Caesarea, the city where the Roman government of Judaea was based, archaeologists found a dedicatory inscription in honor of the emperor Tiberius bearing Pilate’s name and identifying him as prefect of Judea. That discovery establishes Pilate’s historicity.
What manner of man was Pilate? The first-century AD Jewish scholar Philo of Alexandria tells us that Pilate was “a man of a very inflexible disposition, and very merciless as well as very obstinate.” He appears to have had little regard for Jewish religious sensibilities, for in Luke 13:1 we read about “the Galileans whose blood Pilate mixed with their sacrifices.”
Jewish historian Josephus describes an incident in which Jewish protests against Pilate’s use of money from the Temple treasury to construct an aqueduct were met with violent repression. Pilate, “foreseeing the tumult,” placed soldiers in civilian clothes among the crowd. He ordered them not to use swords, but to beat rioters with cudgels when he gave the signal. Large numbers of the Jews perished, some from the blows received, others trodden to death by others in the ensuing flight.
This is the man who comes face to face with Jesus in Sunday’s Gospel. Charged with maintaining order in Judaea and making sure taxes made their way to the imperial treasury in Rome, the prefect made his way to Jerusalem during the Passover festival. When Jesus is brought to the praetorium, there is no time for small talk. The prefect gets right to the point: “Are you the king of the Jews?”
This is the crime of which Jesus stands accused, a capital offense because it threatened the authority of the Roman emperor over this far-flung province. When Jesus sidesteps the question by asking Pilate whether he had come up with this charge on his own or whether it came from others, Pilate answers, “I am not a Jew, am I,” a remark that reflects the low regard in which this Roman held the subjugated people under his authority.
Pilate presses on to ask, “What have you done?,” and Jesus dodges him once more, saying, “My kingdom does not belong to this world.”
That response must have perplexed the Roman, for whom this world was the only one that mattered. Yet, because Jesus repeats “my kingdom” three times, Pilate concludes, “Then you are a king.” Jesus isn’t done confounding the man who ruled in the name of the emperor, explaining, “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.”
The excerpt from the Passion according to John that we hear as this Sunday’s Gospel stops one verse short of Pilate’s famous response to Jesus, “What is truth?” While some interpreters suggest the Roman prefect is waxing philosophical, even if only for a moment, asking a deep question about the essence of truth, it is more likely that his is a rhetorical question that dismisses Jesus.
As is often the case, given the symbolism in John’s Gospel, Pilate’s dismissive quip, “What is truth?” betrays a deeper meaning. In fact, the prefect has the answer: Truth Incarnate, the divine Word-made-flesh stands before him. In the end, it is God, not Pilate, who renders judgment on this world and its ways.
An Alternative Vision
In an era like ours, where there is much talk of “fake news,” and “alternative facts” are strategically deployed to mask difficult truths, and words often become weaponized, Jesus offers a challenging alternative vision.
“¡Viva Cristo Rey!” (“Long live Christ the King!”) were the last words of the Mexican Jesuit priest Blessed Miguel Agustín Pro as he was executed by firing squad on Nov. 23, 1927, his arms outstretched in the form of a cross. Because Christ’s kingdom is not of this world, He invites those who side with Him to rise above worldly contests over power and influence, and to challenge the ways of this world, despite the risks that face those who speak truth to power.
More powerful than the coercive force of any earthly ruler that history has even known, it is the truth and only the truth that can set us free. Long live the loving and life-giving Truth that is the Word made flesh! Long live Christ, the crucified and risen King!
Readings for The Solemnity of Our Lord Jesus Christ, King of the Universe
Daniel 7: 13-14
Psalm 93: 1, 1-2, 5
Revelation 1: 5-8
John 18: 33b-37
Father Ruiz, a priest of the Diocese of Brooklyn, is a professor of theology at St. John’s University.