Homily for Christ the King: Try To Take Over The World

Christ the King, A                                                                                          November 22, 2020
Fr. Albert                                                                                St. John the Evangelist, Jeanerette

Since today is such a special feast, what do you want to do today? The same thing we do every day, try to take over the world. That’s a reference to a favorite cartoon from childhood, one that just resurfaced this week. If you work from a Christian understanding of conquest, it’s actually a great answer.

Now, words like conquest, empire and destruction probably don’t sound like Christian ideas. Yet, these are important themes for this solemn feast. The same God-man who promises to pasture his sheep and seek out the lost also promises to destroy the “the sleek and the strong.” St. Paul promises that “everything” will be “subjected” to Jesus Christ. In other words, Jesus will try to take over the world… and unlike the cartoon character named Brain, he will succeed.

This feast is a rather timely reminder that all worldly leaders, governments, and countries will turn to dust regardless of who you voted for. Only Christ’s kingship will endure. Even while we strive to make our country better, to fight for justice and to protect the rights of all human beings, we are called to remember that, according to an earthly standard, that project is doomed to fail. Whatever your beliefs about the best form of government and the best leader, it is your citizenship in God’s kingdom that matters most.

Jesus doesn’t hide it. He knows that he will conquer the universe. He knows that no matter how powerful, how rich, how clever someone is, they will kneel before him eventually. It’s why we’ll parade him through the streets. Without apology, he states as plain fact that he will judge all of us and that some people will receive eternal punishment. There are many places in scripture that stress the importance of faith and warn about the dangers of sin, but today Jesus Christ focuses in on just one standard for his unconquerable judgment, “you did it to me.”

It makes a lot of sense that this is the standard; it’s exactly the way Emperor Jesus conquers the world in the first place. Not with machines, money, and manipulation, but with love for the least among us. Jesus came to heal us, to feed us with his body, to visit us in spiritual indwelling, and to set us free from the prison of sin. His love, offered on the cross, conquers death. Death ultimately conquers every human kingdom, so Jesus’ conquest over death means his conquest over them too. As members of his kingdom, citizens of his empire, we simply must continue that conquest of love.

He chose to become poor, so he means it when he says, “whatever you did for one of the least brothers of mine, you did for me.” He also knows that acts of love for these least ones are the way that wicked hearts are overcome, that darkened minds are shown the light, and that his mystical, spiritual victory is manifest in a visible, tangible way.

And notice that Jesus speaks of what the sheep and goats did personally. “What you did.” Not “what your church did,” not “what your government did,” not “what you voted for someone else to do,” but “what you did.” Jesus does not expect us to eradicate poverty – he even says the poor will always be with us. Eradicating poverty is impossible in this world. He wants us to love those who suffer from it. That does mean we help them and seek solutions. But if we put the solution as a higher priority than the love that motivates it, we miss the point.

At the same time, if we claim to love someone, we really should create systems and policies that help them without removing our personal involvement and responsibility. We also cannot claim to love someone when we simultaneously support policies that hurt them or violate their human dignity. Regardless, God counts the love that is expressed in the good deeds, not necessarily the good deeds themselves. So, whatever you do, come back to that standard as often as you can, taking as your model the man on the cross, the willing victim.

And truly, by the indwelling of the Holy Spirit and by belonging to his body, the Church, every act of love we do for the least among us is in a real sense Jesus Christ acting in and through us. This is the brilliant completeness of his conquest. He doesn’t compel us from the outside to act a certain way. No, he enters into our very hearts to cause us to freely cooperate with his empire-building. His conquest is most effective from the inside out. We are wise to remember that whenever we find ourselves trying to control another person. We resist their evil decisions, we invite them to belief, we present the truth, but it is only God’s grace which can work from inside to bring them to conversion. For every argument or vote we try to win, we must be ten times more concerned with seeking the grace of God for them.

This starts with inviting that grace into ourselves through frequent confession, through the Mass, through daily prayer in adoration, the rosary, and reading scripture. Still, the standard our king puts before us remains the same. As we seek this grace for our conversion and the conversion of others, we have to ask ourselves “have I loved the least among us?” “Have I looked at that beggar, that mentally ill person, that prisoner, that immigrant and said to myself ‘that is Jesus Christ and I love them because I love him.” Have we acted like it, even if we suspect their problems are their own fault? Are not our sins our own fault? Yet Christ forgives us and gives us grace we don’t deserve.

Jesus Christ is king and “he must reign until he has put all his enemies under his feet.” His enemy is not democrats or republicans. His enemy is sin, hatred, death, and the devil. But he will conquer them all in the end. Our only choice is whether or not we will be part of that conquest, whether we will be his instruments or the instruments of the enemy. And we make that decision one work of mercy at a time. Feed the hungry, clothe the naked, visit the prisoner, house the homeless and never stop seeking the grace of the sacraments you need to do this.

The United States will fall one day. The world will end one day. Christ the King will come in conquest and judgment. Every day, make the choice to help him in his plan of world domination, domination by love, self-sacrifice and grace. Ask yourself each day, “what will I do today?” Then answer it, “try to take over the world… one act of love at a time.”