In this Sunday’s Gospel for the Feast of Christ the King, Jesus stands before Pilate, the man who would soon condemn him to death. He was not intimated or afraid but took the opportunity one last time to state what his whole mission was about: ‘I was born for this. I came into the world for this: to bear witness to the truth; and all who are on the side of truth listen to my voice’. Pilate then famously replied: ‘Quid est veritas?...What is truth?’ Here we offer a few quotes that try to answer that question.
‘The truth is still the truth even if no one believes it; a lie is still a lie even if everyone believes it’.
‘The truth is like the sun you can shut it out for a while but it ain't going away’
Elvis Presley
‘I have consecrated my life to the service of truth. I have loved the truth and I still love it, as one loves a person’.
Yves Congar OP
‘What happens when truth counts for nothing? What kind of justice is then possible? Must there not be must there not be common criteria the guarantee real justice for all - criteria that are independent of the arbitrariness of changing opinions and powerful lobbies? Is it not true that the great dictatorships were fed by the power of the ideological lie and that only truth was capable of bringing freedom?’
Pope Benedict XVI, Jesus of Nazareth: Holy Week, p.191.
‘Truth is conformity between intellect and reality’.
St Thomas Aquinas
‘Truth. Why does this word truth breeds such animosity? Because rebellious human nature resists truths claims. If something is really true, it must be true not just for the person saying it but for the person hearing it. And the fact is we don't want to obey a higher authority from any quarter especially what purports to be from God for fear it will impinge upon our personal autonomy. We cling to the idea that we create our own truth’.
Charles Colson, The Faith, p. 59
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