From today's gospel: "So Pilate said to him, 'Then you are a king?' Jesus answered, 'You say I am a king. For this I was born and for this I came into the world, to testify to the truth. Everyone who belongs to the truth listens to my voice.'"
De La Salle (Med. 84.1): "[Y]ou have the advantage of reading the Gospel and of meditating on the truths found in it every day, and you are responsible to teach these truths to others."
If you read through the gospel stories of Jesus' trial before Pilate, it seems that Pilate was confused by Jesus, and sought to fit him and his kingdom into a Roman imperial worldview. But a kingdom based on the truth of the gospel did not make sense to Pilate. Earlier in this gospel, Jesus left his followers the words that define the truth: "I give you a new commandment: love one another. . . Whoever loves me will keep my word, and my Father will love him, and we will come to him and make our dwelling with him." This commandment for God's kingdom, that we should love the one in whom God is revealed and, through our love for him and one another, know that we are in relationship with God, would not have made any more sense to Pilate than it seems that it would to society as a whole today. God? Relevant? Present in our lives? Yet this is the truth that De La Salle reminded us is our duty to teach to our students. Not only as educators in a Lasallian school, but in a network named for Christ the King, we must be the educational bridge between our students and the kingdom of God, a kingdom that calls for the love, justice, and peace based on a right relationship between you and I, God, and others.
Live, Jesus, in our hearts!