Fr. George W. Rutler |
A
professor told me of two experiences he had when civilization was
picking up its pieces after World War II. He was in the crowd when King
George VI visited Cambridge University and was greeted with loud cheers.
Then, as a U. S. soldier in occupied Japan, he watched as a vast throng
became stone silent when the Emperor alighted from the imperial train,
all heads bowed and eyes downcast. Hirohito no longer had divine
pretensions, but the customary reverence was palpable. The one king
embodied the familial aspect of a monarch as father, and the other was a
reminder of a ruler transcending the ordinary commerce of life.
On
the Feast of Christ the King, the Church proposes a sovereignty both
human and divine: the Holy One who walked the roads of this world as a
man among men was at the same time of Heaven, the Supreme Being.
This
mystery stretches the limited intellect, as in the case of Pontius
Pilate, who remains a fascinating psychological study, as he tried to
figure out if Jesus was a king. Why he posed the question is not clear,
and Jesus asked if the question was his own or a reaction to the
cynicism of the mob. Pilate was a paramount cynic himself, not a skeptic
who doubts whether something is true, but a man who doubts that truth
exists at all. That is why Nietzsche, whose only god was selfish power,
considered Pilate the only powerful character in the Gospel. But then,
it was Nietzsche who said, “I am no man, I am dynamite.” Consistent with
his claim, he ended up insane.
Because
Pilate was too vindictive even for the Roman imperium, the governor of
Syria, Lucius Vitellius, removed him from the prefecture of Judea. One
theory is that Pilate committed suicide in what is now Vienne in modern
France. As for his birth, there is more confusion: possibly Tarragona in
Spain, or more implausibly in the Perthshire Highlands of Scotland, or
Forchheim in Germany, or most likely in the Abruzzi of Italy. You might
say that he was born wherever men refuse to recognize truth when they
see it, and destroy themselves when they have walked away from it. The
moral chaos is more widespread now than in the academic groves of the
classical world, and we see its effect in the campus riots of today and
the mental floss of such philosophers as Michel Foucault and Jacques
Derrida.
This
much can be said for Pontius Pilate: He inscribed that sign “King of
the Jews” and would not remove it. It may have been sheer irony, the
cynicism of a cynic. Or perhaps when he began to roam the hills of
exile, he sensed that the ultimate and only choice in life is holiness
or madness: “And they will go away to eternal punishment, but the
virtuous to eternal life” (Matthew 25:46).
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