Feast of Christ the King
St. Mary's Cathedral, Sydney
Dan 7:13-14; Apoc 1:5-8; Jn 18:33-37
+ Cardinal George Pell, Archbishop of Sydney
22 Nov 2009
Today is the last Sunday of "Ordinary Time" which runs from after Christmas with the interruptions of Lent, Easter, Pentecost, until Advent. While there are many individual feasts it is the period between the great celebrations of the mysteries of our faith. So it is not quite true to claim, as a primary school boy explained that ordinary time is when nothing happens!
Christ the King is a recent feast instituted only in 1925 by Pope Pius XI to combat the excessive claims for state power then being made by the Fascists, Communists and Nazis, who had already begun their ascent to power and the eventual consequences that brought. For a long time the Church avoided the title to prevent misunderstandings, because Christ's kingship is of a different order from that of political leadership in its many forms.
We pray to Our Lord under a variety of titles beginning from the feast of Christmas, the birth of the Christ child which we are fast approaching. One of the strangest devotions is to Christ as the Infant of Prague, elaborately gowned as a young king in a range of exotic regalia, different court costumes. We pray to Christ as Our Lord and Our God (with St. Thomas the doubter), our Redeemer, our Brother and our Friend. He is also the suffering servant, the Christ of the Passion, as earlier he was the young man in the Temple seeking truth from the rabbis. Father Gerard Manley Hopkins, the English Jesuit, who has good claims to be regarded as the founder of modern English poetry, spoke of Christ as an immortal diamond. So one could say that in the different feasts we choose to worship and emphasise some particular aspect of the God-man, of the second person of the Trinity, who emptied himself of his powers to live and suffer among us. Christ is our brother, because he shared our human nature and because God is our father.
In the feast of Christ the King we emphasise his final victory, when the Son of Man will come on the clouds of heaven to be acknowledged by all peoples, nations and languages.
The second reading from the Apocalypse takes up this theme from the Old Testament prophet Daniel. Christ is described as Alpha and Omega, the beginning and end of all history, the creator and then the final judge and restorer of the new heaven and the new earth at the end of time. He has washed away our sins with his blood, is the faithful witness to the truth, the first born of the dead, the first to rise and therefore the ruler of the kings of the earth. Even those who attacked Christ, pierced him, will acknowledge his final victory.
It is a wonderful passage which calls on our depths of faith.
We are members of his Kingdom, whose values are not those of earthly Kingdoms; but it is nonetheless a Kingdom which is rooted in our hearts and in the mud and blood of human history, and which extends far back into the past, far into the future and will be consummated only in eternity. We are disciples, followers of Christ, who rejoice in the name Christian, just as we rejoice in the title Catholic, the Greek word for universal, signifying our membership in the one world-wide family, united under the leadership of the Pope and bishops, which also goes back in an unbroken line to the time and person of Christ and his immediate chosen leaders the Apostles.
In today's gospel we hear of the encounter between Our Lord and Pontius Pilate, the Roman governor of that difficult and rebellious province of an Empire close to the zenith of its power - the Northern Ireland of the Roman world. To an outsider Jesus the Jew belonged to an inferior colonial people. He was no Roman citizen, unlike Paul, able to appeal to the Emperor or seek a Roman trial. He was in fact killed in the way slaves were killed, by public crucifixion. It is difficult to be certain of Pilate's tone as he asked Our Lord whether he was King of the Jews. Was Pilate sarcastic, or puzzled? Did he think Our Lord a simpleton, or some local guerrilla leader with delusions of grandeur, or an unusual and remarkable man, who was perhaps a bit mad also? We cannot be certain, but he certainly received more than he anticipated with Our Lord's reply.
His Kingdom is not of this world, Jesus explained. If it had been of this world, his followers would have fought for him. His kingdom is of another kind, but he is a king nonetheless. He was born for this, and came into the world for this - to bear witness to the truth and all who are on the side of truth listen to his voice. Of all the claims Jesus might have made about his kingship, linking it perhaps to faith, or hope, or love, he linked it to truth. Our Lord was not post modern (where no concept of truth is accepted); he was not into offering therapies; he offered the truth of things.
Pilate was impressed and he was bested. He was a colonial governor, a practical man of affairs, not a philosopher or a priest. "Truth", he muttered, "What is that?"
In conclusion let me emphasise two particular aspects of the kingship of Christ. Following Christ's way of life does deepen our humanity and improve the quality of community life, but does not exempt us from suffering or make life easier in the short term. Being a sister or a brother of the King does not guarantee wealth, or health, or the absence of trouble.
In the second place the feasts of Christ the King, foreshadowing his triumphant return on the last day to inaugurate a new heaven and new earth where love, mercy and justice will rule, reminds us that ultimately Christians are not losers. To mix my metaphors further; we have not backed the wrong horse! Our struggles and achievements and our defeats and disappointments are of ultimate significance. In their small way all our strivings will be taken up by Christ the King as elements in the final Kingdom.
Just as Christ's suffering and death were essential preconditions for the resurrection of Christ the King, so all our good works (no matter how unsuccessful they might be historically or in day to day life), all our good works will be part of the Kingdom of love, with Christ as its centre at the end of time.
In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit. Amen
