They Tremble Before the Truth

There is a scene in the film The Passion of the Christ where the Roman governor Pontius Pilate looks particularly nervous. At the moment he has to decide whether or not to crucify Christ, he asks, almost frightened: “What is Truth?” But Christ did not answer him.

I think he didn’t answer because Pilate did know what the Truth was. But since, deep down, what that public official wanted was to hold on to his share of power at any cost, Christ did not play his little game and gave him no answer.

Pilate did know what the Truth was, and that is why he was so frightened. In that scene we see a Pilate who is doubtful, nervous, afraid!, because even if he washed his hands in front of everyone, he knew he was committing a very great injustice. An injustice that surely never again let him sleep in peace.

That is what life is like for people who act unjustly. That is what life is like for the corrupt. That is what life is like for those who believe they are all-powerful on this earth but, deep in their souls (even if no one sees it), tremble before the Truth and cannot live, or sleep!, in Peace.

We are seeing that in our country right now. We see how those who commit injustices themselves, those who have become corrupt, and others who are accomplices and keep silent about things they know are not right at all, look nervous and agitated… They give off a total lack of peace. In many of them even their faces have changed. It’s striking!

If anyone today asks, as Pilate did, “And what is Truth?”, I can tell them that since the world began that word has always been associated with Goodness, authenticity, consistency, honesty, sincerity, justice, integrity, transparency, good example, being a man or woman of a single piece.

And the opposite of Truth has always been associated with lies, hypocrisy, duplicity, deceit, double lives, injustice and concealment; and in this period of history we could speak of the worst of the worst, which sums up all of these: corruption. It is good to read everything Pope Francis has said about the corrupt and the lives they lead. Personally, it has made me see many things I didn’t see before.

When the dialogue talks began, Pope Francis sent a letter saying that dialogue must be based on the Truth, because a hypocritical dialogue that merely calms tempers without solving problems is useless, especially one held only to maintain a false peace so as to stay in power forever while committing the gravest acts of injustice and corruption.

But the most incredible thing about the fear of Truth is that, terrified of being found out and having to pay for their guilt, the corrupt begin to slander and persecute many people who are upright, honest, people of values, exemplary people of a single piece. Thank God there are plenty of them here. And that is why there is so much fear among those in power, because they know they are not up against people with skeletons in their closets. No! They are up against a different generation, a generation that has been seriously formed and that has many values which it actually lives and practices. Educated people, with values for life, who are working to win Freedom, Justice and Peace for everyone in the country where they were born. That is the generation that will save this country from so much corruption.

Those are the people they truly fear, the ones who make them tremble (even if we don’t see it). Because they stand with the Truth and with Goodness. Because the corrupt know that sooner or later the Truth will come out, Justice will be done and Good will triumph. And whatever they do, whoever they slander, whoever they jail, whoever they kill… they will not be able to stop the longing to save our Homeland.

As Laureano Márquez put it, in substance, in the letter he wrote to the Pope last week: the young people who fill our prisons today are like the first Christians in their time, and there is no Roman Empire that can stop them.

It seems the time of martyrs has come to Venezuela. I will say only one thing: the more injustices are committed against honest people, and the more blood of those who defend the Truth is shed in our Homeland, the sooner Justice and Peace will come.

And remember: we are not afraid, because God is with us, and we will fear nothing and no one!

May God and the Most Holy Virgin of Coromoto bless and protect all Venezuelans who are suffering, or may yet suffer, the injustice and wickedness of the rotten corruption that has destroyed our beloved nation.