People have turned their backs on Jesus from the time of Pontius Pilate to the internet age, the papal preacher said at the Vatican’s Good Friday liturgy.
Cardinal Raniero Cantalamessa, O.F.M. Cap., made the observation on April 15 as he preached at the Liturgy of the Lord’s Passion in St. Peter’s Basilica in the presence of Pope Francis.
Around 3,500 people attended the liturgy. The Pope entered the basilica and stood before the altar. Unlike in previous years, he was unable to lay prostrate, perhaps due to his persistent knee problems.
After the chanting of the day’s reading from St. John’s Gospel, Cantalamessa devoted his homily to the encounter between Jesus and Pilate, the governor of the Roman province of Judaea.
He said: “What a relevant page from the Gospel for today! Even today, as in the past, man asks himself: ‘What is truth?’ But, as Pilate did, he casually turns his back on the one who said, ‘I came into the world to bear witness to the truth.’ ‘I am the Truth!’ (Jn 14: 6).”
“Through the internet, I have followed countless debates on religion and science and on faith and atheism. One thing struck me: hours and hours of dialogue, without ever mentioning the name of Jesus.”
“And if the believing party sometimes dared to mention his name and his resurrection from the dead, they immediately tried to close the discussion as an irrelevant digression. Everything happens ‘etsi Christus non daretur’: as if in the world there had never been a man called Jesus Christ.”
He went on: “What is the result? The word ‘God’ becomes an empty vessel for everyone to fill at will. But it is precisely for this reason that God took care to give content to his name. ‘The Word became flesh.’ Truth became flesh! Hence the staunch effort to leave Jesus out of the discourse on God; he removes from human pride any pretext for deciding himself what God should be like.”
Cantalamessa, who was made a cardinal in 2020 in recognition of his more than 40 years as Preacher of the Papal Household, cited a letter that J.R.R. Tolkien wrote to his son about people who denied the existence of Jesus.