INTERIOR CASTLE
Homily for the Feast of Christ the King,
21 November 2021, John 18:33b-37
Today’s Feast is addressed to the Pontius Pilates of this world. I am referring to arrogant leaders who are so sure of themselves, but who suddenly become very insecure and defensive before a harmless teacher like Jesus of Nazareth, who never claimed to be a king; he proclaimed only God as King. They are unsettled by the fact that people see in Jesus one who truly represents God’s kingship. Face to face with Jesus, Pilate suddenly feels the nakedness and emptiness of his supposed kingship.
John is very clever in the way he portrays the scene of the encounter between Pilate and Jesus. The contrast is very striking: Jesus is consistently calm and serene; Pilate is both nervous and aggressive. I imagine him shouting at Jesus and saying, “Do you admit the criminal charges of sedition that have been filed against you? That you are claiming to be the King of the Jews and are questioning the legitimacy of the kingship of the Roman emperor, whom I represent in your country?”
Jesus answers the question with a question, “Are you saying this on your own, or have others told you about me?” And the question gets Pilate very upset. He gets even more unsettled when Jesus says, “My kingdom is not of this world.” Jesus is driving him crazy. He does not say he is a king and yet he is talking about “his kingdom”. And now, what Pilate really wants to know is, “Where is this kingdom of yours?”
One of the spiritual masterpieces written by the great woman doctor of the Church, Saint Teresa of Avila, has an interesting term for the kingdom that Jesus spoke about to Pilate. She called it an INTERIOR CASTLE. Many people have tried to destroy it but they have not succeeded.
In his preachings, Jesus had always spoken about the Kingdom of God. He even told people where to find it. He said, “The Kingdom of God is within you.” He was definitely not talking about a castle made of stone that Pilate thought he could easily destroy or demolish. And so Jesus said to him, “My Kingdom is not of this world.”
You see, the problem with the kingdoms of this world is, they are showy but they don’t last very long. They come and go, they sprout and disappear like the grass of the field. Name an empire that arose in any part of the world in all its splendor that has not eventually disintegrated. The Babylonian empire, the Persian empire, the Hellenistic empire, the Roman empire, the Byzantine empire, the Ottoman empire. They’re all gone. They were not as formidable and as invincible as people thought they were.
Our first reading today from the Book of Daniel gives us an idea what the worldly kingdoms are like. They are all about the vanity of powerplay, all about the desperate effort to control or to lord it over other people. You should read the whole chapter seven of the book of Daniel to be able to understand his vision.
The prophet is describing four kingdoms that he sees in his dream. They are all trying desperately to compete for power. Their common denominator is their behavior: they manifest what is most beastly, what is monstrous, what is most cruel and inhuman about us human beings. The first is behaving like a lion with the wings of an eagle. The second like a bear with three tusks in its mouth, and the third like a leopard with four heads. The fourth is supposed to have been the most ferocious; it had ten horns and one of the horns is described in a familiar way. The prophet says it loved to talk dirty. It spoke arrogant words, blasphemous language.
Then the prophet ends with a vision of the one who receives the Kingdom of God. He is no longer represented by a monster or an intimidating beast, but by a plain human being. He is not trying to play god. He is not competing for power. Jesus actually spoke very often about this vision of Daniel in the Gospels. He calls him “Bar Nasha” in the Aramaic language, literally “Son of Man”, but I prefer to translate it as THE CHILD OF HUMANITY. Sa Tagalog, ANG ANAK NG TAO, or better yet-Ang ANAK NG SANGKATAUHAN.
Jesus spoke about this figure to James and John when they were competing for positions of power and the other apostles got angry with them because they also wanted power for themselves. He told them to be like the Anak ng Tao “who came not to be served but to serve and to give his life for the redemption of many.”
This was the “king” whom Pilate ridiculed. He kept threatening Jesus that this claim to kingship was a dangerous thing, that it was an act of SEDITION, that it could get him convicted as a terrorist on the basis of his anti-terror law; it could get him executed as a subversive on the cross.
You know, three years ago, when I was criminally charged myself of such atrocious things as sedition, inciting to sedition, cyber libel, obstruction of justice and even estafa, along with thirty-five other people(among them fellow bishops and priests)....
28 сен 2024
