Asking for What the Good Thief Asked, Solemnity of Christ the King (C), November 24, 2019

Fr. Roger J. Landry
Villa Guadalupe Retreat House, Stamford, CT
Retreat For Women: “Woman, Great Is Your Faith: Models of Faith for Women at a Time of Crisis”
Solemnity of Christ the King, Year C
November 24, 2019
2 Sm 5:1-3, Ps 122, Col 1:12-20, Lk 23:35-43

To listen to an audio recording of today’s homily, please click below: 

The following text guided today’s homily: 

Today the Church celebrates with great joy the Solemnity of Christ the King. It is the last Sunday of the liturgical year and, in many ways, the culmination of everything we have marked up until now — the goal of Advent and Christmas, Lent and Easter, Pentecost and Corpus Christi and of all the Sundays and feasts throughout the year. They have all pointed toward this reality, that Christ is the King of the Universe, the Lord of all, the judge of the living and the dead. All of time, all of history, is heading toward this climax when Christ will be revealed to people of every race, nation and religion as the universal King of Kings.

This feast is relatively very young. It was instituted only 94 years ago by Pope Pius XI during the 1925 Jubilee at the request of many bishops and faithful from around the globe in response to a militant atheism spreading at the time that was trying to repress belief in Christ and suppress Christian presence in the world. Just eight years earlier, Bolshevik communism had begun to show its evil head and were seeking to “free” the people from the “opium” of faith in God. In Mexico, there had been a revolution against the “old order” and one of the first results was anti-clerical persecution based on a similar militant atheism. Religious orders were banned. Many priests, brothers and nuns needed to flee across the border into the United States. Churches, monasteries, convents and other religious buildings were confiscated by the State. The Church needed to go underground. Catholic priests like Blessed Miguel Pro, whose feast we celebrated yesterday, at the risk of their lives, donned various disguises to try to bring the sacraments to those who were dying, to celebrate Mass and confessions in people’s homes, to teach the catechism to young children, to care for the many orphans the government was making by the summary executions of parents, to attend to the needs of the poor and destitute. After Blessed Miguel was arrested and hastily brought before the firing squad, he pronounced, as the soldiers raised their rifles and took aim, his emphatic valedictory, “Viva Cristo Rey!” — “Long live Christ the King!”

Christ the King. The last thing that Jesus seemed at the moment that Blessed Miguel was murdered was to be reigning, but in fact he was, even though it did not correspond to anyone’s idea of what a king’s reign would look like. Similarly, when Jesus inaugurated his kingdom, it had nothing to do with anyone’s expectations either. The last thing Jesus looked like as he hung upon the Cross on Good Friday was a king. He was bathed in blood, not clothed with royal purple. He was hammered to a Cross, not seated on a throne. He was crowned with thorns, not with gold and diadems. To ridicule him and humiliate the Jews, Pilate had ordered that an inscription in three languages be placed above his head: “Jesus of Nazareth, King of the Jews.” Rather than pay him homage, most in the crowd mocked him. The chief priests mocked him. The Roman soldiers and passers-by mocked him. Even the thieves crucified with him mocked him. And all of them derided him in the same way: “If you’re truly the king of the Jews, the Messiah, the Christ, come down from that Cross and save yourself.” Such visible force was the only demonstration of kingly power they could comprehend.

For most Jews at the time, Jesus’ crucifixion was the proof that he was precisely not the long awaited Messiah-king for whom they had been waiting for centuries. In the first reading, we see the beginning of David’s kingship in Jerusalem. The Jews anticipated that when the Son of David came, he would rule in the way that his ancestor David had ruled. He would defeat all foreign powers and would be brutal to those who opposed him. When David marched into Jerusalem, right after the end of today’s first reading, the inhabitants of Jerusalem who opposed David told him that even the blind and the lame of the city were united in opposition against him and would defeat him. So when David’s men took the city, they went up and attacked even the blind and the lame. The Jews anticipated that the Messiah-King would use his power to subjugate all those who made themselves his adversaries, not take their abuse and die a horrible death to save his abusers. They were totally unprepared for a king who would serve at all, not to mention to the point of death.

The Romans were likewise unprepared for a king like Jesus. When Pontius Pilate interrogated Jesus, he asked him, “Are you the King of the Jews?” Jesus answered, “My kingship is not of this world; if my kingship were of this world, my servants would be fighting that I not be handed over to the Jews; but my kingship is not of this world.” Then Pilate retorted, “So you are a king?” Jesus replied by describing more specifically what type of king he was and what type of kingdom he was establishing. “You say that I am a king. For this I was born, and for this I have come into the world, to bear witness to the truth. Every one who is of the truth hears my voice.” The Romans thought that kingship meant having the power to crucify or pardon. They thought it was associated with force. Jesus said it is associated with truth and that the meek would inherit the earth.

Even the apostles had a false idea about the kingdom and what it meant to be in the king’s service. We see throughout the Gospel that they were competing against each for the greatest positions in the messianic administration they imagined Jesus would inaugurate. After James and John pathetically got their mother to go up to Jesus to ask him to do whatever she asked and grant that her baby boys sit on his immediate right and left as began his kingdom, Jesus used it as a lesson for all the apostles, who similarly were hungering after the same worldly positions: “You know that the rulers of the Gentiles lord it over them, and their great men exercise authority over them. It shall not be so among you; but whoever would be great among you must be your servant, and whoever would be first among you must be your slave; even as the Son of man came not to be served but to serve, and to give his life as a ransom for many.” That is Jesus’ kingdom. To enter into his kingdom with him, to be his right hand, to be his cabinet ministers, means to be willing to give our life as a ransom for God and others, to serve rather than be served, to give rather than get.

Jesus’ true regality, however, was not lost on everyone. After initially joining in the mocking of Jesus, the criminal on Jesus’s right — at arguably the worst moment of his up-to-then bad life, during his excruciatingly painful public execution — had a change of heart. How this came about we don’t know, but I’ve always had a theory: that just as St. Therese of the Child Jesus prayed for the hardened criminal Henri Pranzini on death row to convert before he would be guillotined, and he asked for a crucifix and kissed Jesus’ wounds right before he died, so on Calvary there was another woman praying for a death row convict’s conversion, the one standing, not swooning, before the Cross in the middle, the one who had heard his and the other thief’s taunting of her son and responded with prayer for their conversion. Something somehow happened in his heart and he now began to see what up until that point he hadn’t, how special the one being crucified beside him was. The Good Thief could understand in his own body the incredible, biting pain Jesus would have been experiencing a few feet away, and yet he could see that that pain had not gained the upper hand. He was able to glimpse that for Jesus, to reign is to serve, to reign is to love, to reign is to give witness to the truth, and to reign is to forgive. The Good Thief saw that Love, Mercy, Service and Truth incarnate was triumphing beside him. The good thief grasped what almost everyone else was missing, that Jesus, mysteriously through suffering and death, was not about to lose a kingdom, but to establish one. He wasn’t about to experience an ignominious defeat but a glorious triumph. With faith, therefore, he turned to the Malefactor in the middle — who would breathe his last before even the thief himself would! — and humbly begged, “Jesus, remember me when you come into your kingdom!” He was asking a dying man to remember him, something that would only be possible if the thief realized that the dying man would somehow still live and be capable of remembering, and the King turned to him and promised that he would do more than remember him. With the largesse befitting the most magnanimous monarch, he declared that he would take him with Himself into the eternal kingdom of paradise. We learn here a very valuable lesson. The ancient Christians used to say, Regnavit a ligno Deus!“God reigns from the Cross.” To say, “Thy kingdom come,” to seek to enter his kingdom, is to resolve to pay him true homage on his throne, to try to live with him there, to pick up our own cross and follow him, to make of our life a true sacrifice out of love for God and others, and so to reign.

But is this what we want? Do we really want this King and this Kingdom?

We live in a day that, just like 2,000 years ago, has many false ideas about Jesus, many erroneous expectations about the kingdom he came to establish, the way he reigns and the way he calls us to reign with him. So many today, too, are tempted to reject the truth of the kingdom, the service of the kingdom, the suffering of the kingdom. We need to face this head on, because when we pray “Thy Kingdom come!,” we need to know that we’re not going to receive in response to those prayers the kingdom of our false expectations but the real Kingdom Jesus established. To live by faith is to live with the King in this the Kingdom.

Let’s begin with the truth of the kingdom. In his most famous homily, Christ the King said that the kingdom of heaven belongs to those who are poor in spirit, and yet so many — even those who call themselves his followers — set their hearts not on spiritual poverty, but on riches, houses, cars, and material things. Christ the King says his kingdom is one of meekness and that the children of the kingdom are those who work to make peace, and yet so many — including those who call themselves disciples — spend far more time cheering on wars than they do working for peace. Christ the King says that his kingdom is a kingdom of mercy and that only the merciful will find the mercy necessary to enter his kingdom, and yet so many — including those who pray every day “forgive us our trespasses just as we have forgiven those who have trespassed against us” — still hold grudges and seek to settle scores, even to the grave. Christ the King says that the pure of heart will see him reign, and yet so many — including the baptized and confirmed — pursue impure relationships, websites, and practices. To enter his kingdom, Christ the King says, we need to be willing to be persecuted and hated because of him, and yet so many seek popularity and to be liked so much that they buckle in their fidelity as soon as anyone gives a hint of disapproving the Gospel. In short, Christ the King says that his kingdom is a kingdom of truth, and that everyone who is of the truth hears his voice. To say “Thy Kingdom come!,” is to make a commitment to know the truth and to structure one’s whole life in accordance with the truth of the kingdom that sets us free. As Cardinal Ratzinger said in 2000,  “The Kingdom of God is God. Kingdom of God means: God exists. God is alive. God is present and acts in the world, in our – in my life. God is not a faraway ‘ultimate cause,’ God is not the ‘great architect’ of deism, who created the machine of the world and is no longer part of it – on the contrary: God is the most present and decisive reality in each and every act of my life, in each and every moment of history.” To enter into his kingdom we must seek to live by the truth that sets us free, structure our whole life according to that truth.

Likewise, to enter into Jesus’ kingdom, we need to grasp what the apostles struggled to get, that to reign is to serve. If we’re truly dwelling with Christ in his kingdom, then we will seek, like Jesus, not to be served, but to serve all the rest to the point of offering our life to ransom, to set them free, from slavery. When we see someone in need, those in the kingdom respond like a Good Samaritan and cross the road. When there’s work to be done, at home or elsewhere, those living in the kingdom don’t pass the buck of responsibility, but look at that task as an opportunity to love others in deeds. When there’s a need for volunteers for an important activity in the Church, those living in the kingdom try to step forward. To pray “Thy kingdom come!” is to ask God for the grace actually to become people for others, who wash others’ feet, who bind others’ wounds, who do the dirty work of the kingdom out of love for others just as Jesus did it for us.

Likewise, for us to enter Jesus’ kingdom, we need to grasp the lesson that most on Calvary missed. We need to be willing to suffer, just like Christ the King suffered on the Cross. Jesus’ kingdom is a kingdom of courage, of witnesses, of martyrs, either red or white. It’s a kingdom not of cowardly spiritual wimps but of humble heroes of faith, strengthened by the Holy Spirit to give witness to Jesus even when people are pressuring us, or intimidating us, or threatening us to compromise on our faith. It’s a kingdom in which people seek to remain faithful in little things and ordinary circumstances so that they will remain faithful at the most challenging times. Just like someone who is married should not hide the fact that he or she is married from his co-workers and friends — and if one did, it would almost always be a bad sign — so when a Christian hides the fact that he is in a faithful Covenant with Jesus that influences his entire identity and life, it’s always a bad sign, too. If we’re living in Jesus’ kingdom, we’re going to be living differently than all the rest. We’ll be living in the world, but not in a worldly way. We’ll be giving witness by the way we live that Jesus calls us to holiness and we know it, that Jesus calls us to sacrificial love and we’re living it, that Jesus calls us to give faithful witness to him, and we’re unashamed to show it. And so this Solemnity gives us the opportunity to examine our consciences about whether we’re witnesses or wusses with regard to passing on to others the good news of great joy and inviting them to enter with us into Christ’s kingdom. It’s a chance for us, if we haven’t been giving witness to our faith, in season and out of season, to our friends and family members, to our co-workers and fellow students, to open ourselves up to God’s help to begin to do so.

As we finish today on this great solemnity our retreat focused on becoming the women or men great in faith that the crises in the Church and the world demand, we turn to God and ask him, with the words of the apostles, “Lord, increase our faith.” In Christ the King’s images about the kingdom, he talked about growth, saying that the kingdom is like a tiny mustard seed, what begins as among the smallest of seeds but grows into a tree so that all the birds can come to rest in its branches, like a tiny pinch of yeast that can lift up the dough of the world. He said that when we receive the message of the kingdom not with stubbornness, or superficiality, or worldly cares and anxieties but with good soil, the seed of the Kingdom will grow within us to bear 30, 60 or 100-fold fruit that will last. If we wish to seize this kingdom, he emphasized, we have to be all in if we wish to seize the kingdom, because a kingdom divided against itself cannot stand. Christ the King, however, wants to give us the help he knows we need to approach the kingdom as a pearl of great price and a treasure buried in a field worth trading everything else in life to obtain. He has told us that he has chosen us to be the laborers in his kingdom, and whether he has summoned us at five in the morning or at five in the afternoon, if we labor together with him he will give us generously a full life’s wage. And he has compared that kingdom ultimately to an unending wedding banquet, for which we’re called to prepare with lamps lit and vest ourselves properly in the garments of our baptism, which we were instructed on that day to keep unstained for the eternal life of heaven.

As we prepare now to receive a foretaste of that eternal nuptial feast, we turn to Christ the King about to reign from the altar, and ask what St. Thomas Aquinas asked in one of his famous Eucharistic hymns, “Peto quod petivit latro poenitens,” “I ask for what the Good Thief asked,” to be with him not only in a paradise to come but in a loving communion that begins now, because the Kingdom of God is God, God exists, he is alive, he is present and acts in the world, in my life as the most present and decisive reality in each and every act of my life, in each and every moment of my history. We ask Christ the King to grant us all the help he knows we need so that we may always live in his kingdom and help others to seize it as the most precious pearl. We ask him to grant us the help he knows we need so that he may say to us now and eternally, “Great is your faith.”

The readings for the Mass were: