Quid est Veritas?

<Quid est Veritas?> This is the question that Pilate puts to Jesus Christ inside the praetorium.

<What is Truth?> Or perhaps, more fittingly: <Who are You?>

Before the mysterious figure of the tumefied Messiah, Pilate is baffled and perplexed as he seeks to understand the mind, the thought and the heart of the Christ, the Son of God.

Truth, is a question that has preoccupied Man for centuries, and in truth, since the dawn of time. Man has wondered about this inherent quality of his existence that seeks nobility, clarity and profundity of meaning in everyday interactions and behind the seemingly benign happenings of daily living. Man has pondered: <What is Truth?>

Truth, regal, absolute, mysterious, majestuous, stands before the eyes of Pilate and he can barely utter a sensible word. Jesus, came, to testify to the Truth, the Truth who is God, and the God of Whom he is the Son and Word.

Truth, has mystified Man and since the time of the philosophers, men have come up with logical frameworks, hypotheses, theories and teachings and doctrines, in order to uncover this peculiar and inner most characteristic of their existence. Some, Apostles of their own time, have given their selves, sacrificing the ultimate gifts of their existence: their lives.

It is such questions that have preoccupied above all, the men of science. Behind their inquisitive endeavors, they uncovered the layers of the human psyche, of the human flesh, peeling away at their inner constitutions and unveiling their innermost fabric. Among these men of brilliance, stands a man by the name of Galen, who influenced up till the 16th century, the medical theory and practice of the Western world. Behind him, men of immense intellect rested their medical theories and their physical understanding of the human being. Informed by the Aristotelian view of man, he theorized on the humoral view of the body in which the balance of the body is maintained through a harmony of the four humors: the phlegmatic, the choleric, the melancholic and the sanguine. Even further, the man of science, by his intellect, made a series of observations that greatly contributed to the understanding of human anatomy.

Unfortunately, during the 16th century, the new advances in anatomy revolutionized the comprehension of the human body and severely indented the Galenic view of medicine. His theories, fell out of favor, although the metaphysical view he espoused, that of vitalism, did not fall obsolete until the 19th century, when the materialistic and physico-chemical understanding of man, and of society for that fact, greatly shaped and transformed the knowledge of the human being. Needless to say, that, the Galenic case is interesting as it, itself, remains demonstrative of the new relationship that subsists between human knowledge and the acquisition of truth. In this regard, truth is particular, since it is conditioned by its time and it evolves through the centuries. Truth, in the scientific sense, is progressive and evolutive.

And so, as the question poses itself once again, a further clarification is now made. Truth, exists but it only exists as 'truth', particular, limited and thus confined to its own time. To the Christian admission of Truth, the theological reality of the Christ as the Source of all that Is, the scientific credo responds with the relativity and the materiality of human knowledge. Truth, in the last analysis, is what man makes of it. Truth, depends on his art, on his skill and on his ability to 'press' matter and peel it apart successfully in order to discover its secrets and render them intelligible by the logic of mathematical numbers and functioning.

<Quid est Veritas?> The age-old question no longer fascinates, it no longer grabs the attention, seizing human passion to the point of glorified martyrdom. Who would give one's life for the Truth? But who would not give one's life for Life?

As Pilate peeks and stares into the Divine eyes of Christ, attempting to uncover his Soul and reveal the mystery of his existence, of his words, of his teaching and of his Love, he awakes to one inescapable conclusion: "Truth, is what I make of it".

And so, he leaves the praetorium, with the perturbed conviction that his truth will have the last word in the puzzling case of the Galilean carpenter, turned Rabbi and Teacher of a Nation, the Hope of a New World.