Friends, we come to the end of the liturgical year with the Feast of Christ the King, where we meditate upon the kingly reign or rule of Christ. Now, we in the modern liberal West have a hard time with kings; we like democratic polities. The United States emerged out of a great rebellion against the king. But we should get over this modern hang-up, because kingship—from Adam all the way up to Christ—is a basic biblical idea. And the importance of today’s feast is that it forces a decision about which king we follow.
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GOSPEL
Solemnity of Our Lord Jesus Christ, King of the Universe
John 18: 33b-37
Friends, today we celebrate the feast of Christ the King. And though the very notion of kingship is rather alien to us, the metaphor should remain. For the whole idea is that Christ must become the Lord of our lives, the one to whom an absolute submission is required.
Things do become a bit easier to take when we see precisely what kind of king Jesus Christ is. Bottom line: we are not dealing with another Napoleon or Caesar Augustus; just the contrary. We are dealing with the one who rightly reigns over those earthly potentates but who bears very little resemblance to them.
Our first clue as to his identity comes from the Gospel for today, an account of Jesus’ conversation with the Roman governor Pontius Pilate, who asks, “Are you the King of the Jews?” And Jesus responds that his kingdom “does not belong to this world.”
So what precisely is his kingship? Worldly kingship has to do primarily with power and self-aggrandizement. But the kingship that Jesus represents is a ruling ordered to the truth. Its purpose is to guide people to the truth, which is another way of saying toward God.