Pilate's Question

"Pilate said to him: What is truth? And when he had said this, he went out again to the Jews, and said to them: I find no fault in him" (John 18:38).

Pilate asked the Lord: "What is the truth?", but he did not wait for the answer, but he immediately went out to the Jews. Before him was a physically contemptible man, without any sign of greatness, and emaciated. This man had dared to tell him: "I was born for this, and for this I have come into the world, to bear witness to the truth. Everyone who is of the truth hears my voice". Bold words, no doubt, but they failed to arouse his curiosity.

Pilate had the One who is the truth before his eyes, but he did not recognize him. His question reveals, not the inquisitive approach of one who seeks to know the hidden God; it is not the longing question, asked to someone who can perhaps give an answer, but rather the skeptical question of someone who no longer believes in anything, nor expects to believe in anything.

There are many, like Pilate, who spend a lifetime wondering about the truth, and searching for it, without finding it. Could it be that God arbitrarily hides himself from his eyes? They have made many efforts, but their efforts have been in vain, because they have sought it from their intelligence, which is, in their eyes, marvelous, and not from their fragility.

The professional truth-seeker eventually loses his bearings, and devotes himself, like the Epicureans and Stoics of Paul's day, to saying and hearing something new. It is the intellectual exercise for vanity, it is the discovery of some small truth for display.

Knowing the truth requires living it. To find the truth is to turn to it. To have the truth is to renounce all previous truths, so zealously defended. Only those who really want to know the truth will know it. Because true is not so far away that you cannot reach it, but it will present to you at the least expected moment to never abandon you again.

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