Solemnity of Jesus Christ, King of the Universe, C November 22, 2019
Fr. Albert St. John the Evangelist, Jeanerette
Are you not the Christ?! Prove it! That cry has echoed in the world from even before the Crucifixion. Parents of sick children, victims of unjust war, refugees of natural disaster have all railed against the claim that an all-loving God is truly in charge. The thief is not asking about Jesus’ last name. Christ means “anointed one,” which is a synonym for King. “Are you not the Christ” is the cry to God that wonders if his kingly power is really as great as we’re supposed to believe.
The kingship of Jesus Christ, his phenomenal, absolute dominion over the universe is inextricably linked with the scandal of the Cross. That’s why we read of his most humiliating moment on the very day we triumphantly proclaim royal power over all.
It is a real scandal, though… a stumbling block for those with a worldly idea of power. The Jews expected such great things from the Messiah. The legends of King David and the promises of the prophets and the psalms all left them with the idea that the Messiah would be a little more… obvious in his royalty. Instead he shows up for three years, heals some people, teaches some radical new ideas, and then up and dies in the worst way imaginable… executed as a slave. What kind of king is that? Why follow such a man? But for all the contradictions, this brigand, hardened in crime and justly executed for it, recognizes in this man he does not know the one king with authority to save him.
For this is precisely how God means to show kingship. For all the injustices that we blame on God, he looks at us mourning the hell we create for ourselves. What we blame on God is really the fault of our own ideas of kingship. Wars waged by mortal men seeking to dominate, to lord their power over others. The attacks of nature and the pains of disaster are the fruit of the perverse authority that Eve took to herself in the garden and shared with her husband Adam. God gave them a taste of his authority – the power to never die – to never be victims of the changing natural world, but the devil convinced them to seize a power that was really the worst of weaknesses. Original sin cast us from God’s first kingdom and left us victims to our own caprice. Yet we blame the king we disobeyed when we suffer from ignoring his royal power.
Any merely earthly king, disobeyed and blamed for a problem he did not create, would leave the wicked in their misery or have them executed for their crimes. But not the divine king. No, he proves his mastery even over misery by doing what only true power can do. He set aside his grandeur and exercised the great authority of humility, entering into our lowly suffering to be king even in our pain. To a world mad with perverse power, he proved the potency of love so great that it triumphs even where it is rejected and killed. For, once evil has killed love, what more can it do? Nothing but watch in awe as the love it killed returns in power and glory to save the very people who killed it.
And it is this saving scandal, this paradox of power that we are meant to recall and celebrate on the last Sunday of the liturgical year. It’s not that God’s kingdom will only come on the last day at the end of time. When Pope Pius XI added this feast to the calendar, he told us why. To remind the rulers and people of this world that Christ is King now and forever. World War I had just happened because of the anguished overreaches of earthly rule and the arrogant assumption that religion was a merely private matter. That error still reigns today. “Keep your faith to yourself.” “All religions are the same, so long as they help you to be a better person.” “Religion shouldn’t influence politics.”
Lies. All lies. If Jesus truly is the Christ, the anointed king of the universe, then it is utter foolishness to act like he isn’t. If he is really who he says he is, then wouldn’t it make the most sense to obey the one who not only designed the universe you lived in, but your own body and soul? The world has forgotten that presidents, prime ministers, and kings are only shadows and servants of the one true king. This feast is for us to remind ourselves and to remind them of the eternal kingdom that has already begun. That has been here since the days Christ spoke the blessed words, “Today you will be with me in paradise.”
So, dear souls, dear Catholics of St. John the Evangelist and throughout the whole Church, hear the call of your king! Rise up to your duty and proclaim his royal dignity to the world! Do it not by political manipulation, by inflammatory rhetoric, or physical force. Do it the way the king himself did. By willingly sitting upon the throne meant for him, the throne of the cross. Show Christ’s reign in your life by embracing your destiny, not someone else’s. Don’t waste your time and attention agonizing over the battles being waged elsewhere in the Church, fight the battle against sin in your own heart and in the realms where you actually have influence. Fight that battle the way Jesus did, by loving those who attack you, by absorbing the wickedness of the world even to the point that it kills you.
But to do that well, to get to that point, you must renounce Satan and all his works. Paul tells us in the second reading that Christ “delivered us from the power of darkness and transferred us to the kingdom of his beloved Son.” Are you truly transferred into that kingdom? Where is the darkness in your life? Impure relationships, invalid marriages, addictions, dishonesty, grudges, greed and lust for power? As we stare down the week of thanksgiving and the idolatry of materialism incarnate in Black Friday, how will you respond? How will you show the world that before Christmas comes Advent, before the child comes the anguish of pregnancy and birth, before the resurrection comes the cross?
As we are on the cusp of a new year in the Church, make it a new year of serving the kingdom of sacrificial love. As we carry Christ into the streets in the Eucharist, how will you carry him into the world in your hearts and relationships? Jesus, are you not the Christ? Then save us! Save us from ourselves and teach us to die with you so that today and everyday, we may be with you in paradise.