Today’s Solemnity of Christ the King takes us to Jesus before Pontius Pilate (Jn 18:33b-37).  Pilate asks Jesus if He is the King of the Jews.  Jesus asks why Pilate so inquires and he tells Him that this is the charge brought against Him by the Jewish religious leaders who handed Jesus over to the Romans.  Jesus says His kingdom is not of this world.  Pilate presses again and Jesus confirms He is a king who has come to testify to the truth.  The last words Jesus utters to Pilate are at top.  With His fate in the balance, Jesus finds it most important to speak about truth.  This is a deadly serious thing.  That which is not truth must be rejected out of hand as a thing that pulls us away from Jesus.  Lies, big or small, cannot be countenanced and must be given no quarter.  Neither can the Father of Lies, so pervasive in this age, be tolerated.  Earlier in John, Jesus describes Satan this way: “He was a murderer from the beginning and does not stand in truth, because there is no truth in him. When he tells a lie, he speaks in character, because he is a liar and the father of lies” (Jn 8:44).  The devil has many children today as his lies and deception permeate society and the world.  This is a difficult force to combat, but fight back we must.  Never be afraid to stand on the side of truth and to defend that truth who is Jesus (“I am the way and the truth and the life” — Jn 14:6).  Doing so can lead to temporal effects not to our liking, but failure to do so may have eternal consequences: “Everyone who acknowledges me before others I will acknowledge before my heavenly Father.  But whoever denies me before others, I will deny before my heavenly Father” (Jn 10:32-33).  We must keep up the good fight against the falsehoods so easily spread and even more quickly accepted or even embraced in this day and age.  A renewed call to “Pray without ceasing” (1 Thess 5:17) is a good goal to shoot for.