"For this was I born, and for this came I into the world." John 18: 37.
We read in today's gospel the tense conversation between Pilate and Jesus. It is not quite an argument, but neither is it a friendly exchange. Pilate begins by interrogating Jesus about whether he is king. Instead of answering directly, Jesus responds by asking his own question of Pilate: ‘Do you ask this of your own accord, or have others spoken to you about me?’ Pilate might be the procurator but Jesus is in charge of the conversation. I wonder if Jesus deals with Pilate as He deals with other souls He loves but who do not know Him or want to know Him. He offers Pilate a paradox: His kingdom is not of this world. Thereby, he does not confront Pilate. He throws him a lifeline.
What is striking about this exchange, however, is that Jesus follows it up by explaining: 'I was born for this, I came into the world for this'. We often hear these days that this feast of Christ the King is eschatological - pointing towards the conclusion of history - but the feast makes no sense without also being at the same time historical. Jesus came into the world and was born at a particular time; like any human being, he is an actor in history - the history of his time and the life stories of his neighbours and relations. Whatever purpose he came for, his actions were inscribed in a particular historical chapter. For all of us - followers of Jesus or imitators of Pilate - the drama of the end will be shaped by our here and now or indeed by how much we embrace the task for which we were born and for which we came into this world at this precise time.
The COLW Book of Life underlines this purpose as our vocation. COLW itself was a response to St John Paul II's agenda for new vocations for Europe. What was I born for? What did I come into the world for? Pilate's difficulty is not just that he does not know the answer to that question; he simply does not believe there is a reason out there to find. His retort to Jesus (which we do not hear in today's gospel) is dark and terse: 'What is truth?' He might easily have said, 'I was born for no reason and neither were you, Jesus.'
So, what am I doing here? For what purpose did I come into the world? We can only answer these questions by putting them to Jesus. We need to dialogue with Jesus, although not like Pilate did. As a disciple of Jesus, I know that the answer for me will be similar in some ways to Jesus' answer: I was born to bear witness to the truth. Yet, we are not mere carbon copies of Jesus; we are formed in his image of course, but our lives are only a fragment of the mosaic formed by his Mystical Body. This is yet another reason why we need to discover our docibilitas - our readiness to learn. We might miss the answer about what our purpose is if we have no urgency about asking the question in the first place.
Thinking there is no real purpose to things, Pilate cannot learn. That is his tragedy. In contrast, we are called to endure the darkness of believing there is a purpose to things, even when we do not know what it is. Our readiness to dialogue with Jesus in that darkness is docibilitas in action.
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