FEAST OF CHRIST THE KING
Genesis,
Chapter 18, verse 14-16
14 Nothing is impossible for Yahweh. I shall come back to
you at the same time next year and Sarah will have a son.' 15 Sarah said, 'I did not laugh,' lying because she was afraid.
But he replied, 'Oh yes, you did laugh.' 16 From there the men set out and arrived within sight
of Sodom, with Abraham accompanying them to speed them on their way.
Nothing is impossible for he who is. According to Doctors
Michael Roizen and Mehment Oz, Yahweh is nearly unpronounceable sounds that are
made in our first and last breaths made in life. At the first deep inspire of
air comes the sound YAH and at the last wheeze WEH. He is the alpha and the
omega; the beginning and the end.[1]
When I was a youth of 20 I had the great honor of serving in the Navy Seabee’s
and went to build the South Pole Station in Antarctica and breathing was
difficult in the frozen thin air, here is an excerpt from my book, “The Ice is
Nice and Chee-Chee is Peachy.
It is interesting to note that when we laugh, we are
forcing our breath out. Be Not Afraid.
On the last Sunday
of the liturgical year, we celebrate the Feast of Christ the King. Now see how
he takes our nature out of love in His passion; Jesus is alone; the crowds who
sang ‘hosanna!’ as he entered Jerusalem just five days previously are now
shouting, ‘Crucify him!’ He has been accused unjustly. His mission has
all but collapsed. His friends have run away; one of them has sold him, another
says that he does not even know him. And now he stands before the most
powerful person in the land on a falsified charge. This is a really bad
day, and it is about to get worse. He will be flogged, he will walk the
way of the Cross ... what happens next is well known to us all. It is a
day which seems, by our normal standards, to be characterised by failure and
abandonment. This is not our usual idea of what happens to a
king. What we have here are two worlds, two kingdoms that come face to
face as Jesus stands before Pilate. On the one side we have this earthly ruler
representing the most successful empire the world had ever seen, a man with
economic, political and military power; a successful man, with a reputation.
This is someone to be taken seriously. And in Jesus we have God’s world, the
Kingdom of God personified, and a completely different set of values where we
are not subjects or slaves, but we are now friends. We are not equals; God is
the Creator, the maker and author of all, but our relationship with God has
been restored. We have a king who rules over an eternal kingdom which, in the
Preface of the Eucharistic Prayer for this feast, is described as:
·
a
kingdom of truth and life,
·
a
kingdom of holiness and grace,
·
a
kingdom of justice, love and peace.
But which world do
we value? Inevitably as Christians we inhabit both of these worlds, we
move between them. We may spend six days a week living in one kingdom,
but only one matters, and we know which one, but it is often hard to
choose. Pilate represents one kingdom, Jesus represents the other. In the
Nicene Creed there are only two people (apart from Jesus) that are mentioned by
name – Pilate and Mary – and again they show this same contrast: Pilate is
wealthy, powerful, male, successful, secure, safely married; he has most of the
things that many of us desire. Mary on the other hand, at the
Annunciation, is a young woman, pregnant out of wedlock and therefore suspect,
and at risk of exclusion from the Jewish community. She is one of the anawim,
the voiceless, the poor who yearn for good news. Few of us desire to be
like this. We have these two worlds, two kingdoms. Only one of them
is the Kingdom of God; only one of them is true, eternal and universal.
But which do we choose? Which do we hope for? For which am I
ambitious? If we are honest with ourselves, very often we would rather be
Pilate. But it is not about us, it is about Jesus. He is king, no
one else. To talk of kingship or lordship can evoke images of oppressive
or coercive systems, but for Jesus kingship is about humility and
service. This feast is not to flatter a king with a fragile ego in need
of reassurance, but to celebrate in gratitude the love and kindness of someone
who is so committed to us that he will not compromise even in the face of the
most powerful in the land, and who will not baulk even at death itself.
The image of the Shepherd King may not be an especially rich one for most of
us, but it was immensely powerful for the people of Israel, evoking ideas of
care and love. All of this is in contrast to the kingship of power and
domination, the reigns of kings that do not have the best interests of everyone
at heart. This is the king who is lord over life and death and all there
is. There is plenty of ambition in this world; that is not necessarily a
bad thing. But Christians are called to be ambitious for the Kingdom, not
for ourselves; to seek power not in order to dominate, but to serve. The
only throne that this king found was the cross. We are not to seek
thrones of glory on which we can be admired, and if we do get them then we
ought to pray for a very large dose of humility; we are to pray before the
Throne of Glory from which we will receive mercy, love and hope. In a
world where we are so often encouraged to seek power and success, it can be
difficult to accept the truth of this; however, this truth is not a proposition
or an idea, but a person to get to know. ‘Everyone who belongs to the
truth listens to my voice’, says Jesus – and Pilate does not hear him.
One of the reasons the Church says that each Sunday is a Holy Day of Obligation
is because in order to get to know this person, in order to be people of the
truth we have to meet him – in the Word and sacrament – and spend time with
him, listen to his voice: to find out about the Kingdom of God. This is not
easy, and we need the support of each other, the support of the Church.
We, like Jesus, will probably encounter denial or betrayal. Like Judas
and Peter, we may at times betray or deny him; these are risks for us
also. But Christians are future-oriented people, and we are asked to have
a vision of a better world, not just in the next life but in this, and to dream
of a kingdom in which Christ is the king. We are people of hope –people
who, in the future, can be free from our past and the worst we have done: our
spectacular sins – the betrayals, the denials; and our mundane, ordinary and
petty ones. But this hope is fragile and needs to be protected. In
the Mass for the Feast of Christ the King we are asked to bring our worst to
the Lord, to bring our nightmares and our horror. Our nightmare can be
turned into dreams of hope; there is a future, death is not the end, Good
Friday is followed by the resurrection. God will make all things
new. The life, death and resurrection of Jesus show us this. Bring
your best and your worst, your dreams and your nightmares to the altar. We
have a king who can cope with that, a king who can cope with us. Thank
God for that.
The Solemnity of
Our Lord Jesus Christ, King of the Universe, formerly referred to as
"Christ the King," was established by Pope Pius XI in 1925 as an
antidote to secularism, a way of life which leaves God out of man's thinking
and living and organizes his life as if God did not exist. The feast is
intended to proclaim in a striking and effective manner Christ's royalty over
individuals, families, society, governments, and nations. Today's Mass
establishes the titles for Christ's royalty over men:
1)
Christ is God, the Creator of the universe and hence wields a supreme power
over all things; "All things were created by Him";
2) Christ
is our Redeemer, He purchased us by His precious Blood, and made us His
property and possession;
3)
Christ is Head of the Church, "holding in all things the primacy";
4) God
bestowed upon Christ the nations of the world as His special possession and
dominion.
Today's Mass also
describes the qualities of Christ's kingdom. This kingdom is:
1) supreme,
extending not only to all people but also to their princes and kings;
2)
universal, extending to all nations and to all places;
3)
eternal, for "The Lord shall sit a King forever";
4)
spiritual, Christ's "kingdom is not of this world." —
Indeed, we all are called to be fishers of men; the Lord calls all; truly
we are not powerless for He gives us his very flesh that we may become Christ
to everyone we encounter.
The most holy council, then, earnestly entreats all the laity in the Lord to answer gladly, nobly, and promptly the more urgent invitation of Christ in this hour and the impulse of the Holy Spirit. Younger persons should feel that this call has been directed to them especially and they should respond to it eagerly and generously. The Lord renews His invitation to all the laity to come closer to Him every day, recognizing that what is His is also their own (Phil. 2:5), to associate themselves with Him in His saving mission. Once again, He sends them into every town and place where He will come (cf. Luke 10:1) so that they may show that they are co-workers in the various forms and modes of the one apostolate of the Church, which must be constantly adapted to the new needs of our times. Ever productive as they should be in the work of the Lord, they know that their labor in Him is not in vain (cf. 1 Cor. 15:58).
·
A
procession for Christ the King on this feast day, either in the Church or at
home is appropriate for this feast. The Blessed Sacrament would be carried, and
the procession would end with a prayer of consecration to Christ the King and
Benediction. Try to participate if your parish has a Christ the King
procession. If not, try having one at home (minus the Blessed Sacrament).
·
Read
Pope Pius XI's encyclical Quas
primas (On the Feast of Christ the King) which shows that secularism
is the direct denial of Christ's Kingship.
·
Learn
more about secularism - read the Annual
Statement of the Bishops of the United States released on November
14, 1947.
·
Being
a relatively newer feast on the Liturgical calendar, there are no traditional
foods for this day. Suggested ideas: a wonderful family Sunday dinner, and bake
a cake shaped as a crown or King Cake or a bread in shape of a crown in honor
of Christ the King.
·
A
partial indulgence is granted to the faithful, who piously recite the Act
of Dedication of the Human Race to Jesus Christ King. A plenary
indulgence is granted; if it is recite publicly on the feast of our Lord Jesus
Christ King.
"Read
these counsels slowly. Pause to meditate on these thoughts. They are things
that I whisper in your ear-confiding them-as a friend, as a brother, as a
father. And they are being heard by God. I won't tell you anything new. I will
only stir your memory, so that some thought will arise and strike you; and so
you will better your life and set out along ways of prayer and of Love. And in
the end you will be a more worthy soul."
It's as if your guardian Angel were saying to you:
'You fill your
heart with so much human attachment!...
And that, then, is what you want your
Guardian to guard!'
Daily Devotions
[3]http://www.catholicculture.org/culture/liturgicalyear/calendar/day.cfm?date=2017-11-26
[6]http://www.escrivaworks.org/book/the_way-point-1.htm
No comments:
Post a Comment