Christ the King (A), Conversations with Consequences Podcast, November 21, 2020

Fr. Roger J. Landry
Conversations with Consequences Podcast
Homily for the Solemnity of Christ the King (A)
November 21, 2020

To listen to an audio recording of this short Sunday homily, please click below: 

The text that guided the homily is: 

• This is Fr. Roger Landry and it’s a privilege for me to be with you as we enter into the consequential conversation the Risen Lord Jesus wants to have with each of us as we celebrate the Solemnity of Christ the King this Sunday.

• Christ the King is, by the standard of Church history, still a very young feast. It’s only 95 years old. It was instituted by Pope Pius XI in 1925 Jubilee in response to the rise of communism, fascism and aggressive secularism, all of which were trying to eliminate Christian influence in society to be supplanted by communist, fascist or secularist pseudo-religious ideologies. Pope Pius XI stressed both the importance of Christian believers influencing society for the good as salt of the earth, light of the world and leaven, but also cautioning them to recall that Christ had not come into the world to inaugurate a political but a spiritual kingdom. That’s a lesson Pontius Pilate didn’t get when he asked Jesus whether he was a king. That’s a point that most Jews didn’t get when they anticipated the long-awaited Messiah would rule in the way that his ancestor David had ruled, defeating all foreign powers and triumphing over all who opposed him. That’s a truth that not even the apostles grasped as they jockeyed for the choicest cabinet secretariats in what they presumed would be earthly administration.
• The King we celebrate does not fit into any of those earthly categories. As St. Paul wrote in his letter to the Philippians, Christ the King “even though he was in the form of God, did not regard equality with God as something to be exploited, but emptied himself, taking the form of a slave and being born in human likeness. He humbled himself, becoming obedient to the point of death — even death on a cross” (Phil 2:6-8). Christ’s whole kingship is caught up in his saving service until death. Whereas most terrestrial kings have slews of servants caring for their every need, Jesus came “not to be served but to serve” those who by creation ought to be his servants. Whereas earthly leaders regularly have sacrificed their subjects as soldiers for their personal royal aggrandizement, Christ the King came to die for his subjects, “to give his life as a ransom for the many.” That’s the king we fête. That’s the kingdom he has established. That’s the way we’re called to reign with him.
• In the Gospel for the feast, Christ the king identifies as someone who hungers and thirsts, as a stranger, as someone naked, imprisoned or sick, as someone suffering or in need, and says that whatever we do to anyone in these circumstances he will take personally. These are not just words for Jesus. When Jesus was on the Cross, for example, he himself was needy in all of the ways he described. He was hungry and cried out, “I thirst!” He was stripped naked. He was a stranger even in the world he created, kicked out of his own city of Jerusalem to die as a malefactor at the place of the skull. He was sick and wounded, having had his flesh ripped open by a brutal Roman scourging, having been beaten and crowned with thorns. He was imprisoned not only in the high priest’s dungeon but pinned to the cross not by chains but by nails. The more we look to him on his throne of the Cross, the easier it is supposed to be for us to see his sufferings in the suffering members of his Mystical Body.
• Just as it shocked the people 2,000 years ago that Jesus crucified was really the King of Jews, so people remain shocked that he humbles himself to identify personally with the little ones and make themselves their servants. But he wants us to grasp and live this lesson, that to enter his kingdom, to reign with him, we must like him serve and lay down our lives in love of the poor, the outcast, the weak.

• God’s kingdom is ultimately one in which we care for each other, in which we feel responsible for each other, in which we behave as Good Samaritans crossing the road for each other, inconveniencing ourselves for each other, and sacrificing ourselves for each other’s welfare. He tells us that when he comes at the end of time in his glory as King to judge the living and the dead, he will separate us into two groups, as a shepherd separates sheep from goats. This division will be as stark as the separation between light from darkness and truth from lies. He will place his sheep, the saved, on his right and the goats, the accursed, the damned, on his left. Then he will say to those on his right, among whom, God-willing, we hope to be numbered: “For I was hungry, and you gave me food; thirsty and you gave me drink; naked and you clothed me; a stranger and you welcomed me; ill and you cared for me; in prison and you visited me.” Those on his right will respond, in effect, “Lord, when did we do any of this for you?” And the King will reply, “Whatever you did for the least of my brothers and sisters, you did for me!” Jesus did not mean to give us an exhaustive list of good deeds or even very hard things to accomplish, like giving away huge sums of money or extraordinary acts of heroic sacrifice that will earn us one day a Wikipedia page. He gave us six simple actions that any of us can do and have the opportunity to do almost every day as a sign of what he’s asking. And he said that is the path for us to “inherit the kingdom prepared for [us] since the foundation of the world.”
• He also said that it’s possible to fail this final exam of life when some will hear those horrible words, “Depart from me you accursed into the everlasting fire prepared for the devil and his angels.” Those who will hear them are not necessarily people we would call evil. To some, they might even seem holy. By their question to the King in today’s parable — “Lord, when did we see you hungry, or thirsty, naked or a stranger, ill or in prison and not attend to your needs?” — they imply that had they known it was the Lord they would have spared no effort. But because all they saw was a “nobody,” they did nothing. The great test of our love for God is our love for each other, especially those people who are challenging to love. Dorothy Day once said, “We love God to the extent that we love the person we like the least.” We love God to the extent that we love a poor hungry beggar, or a homeless drunk, or a felon on death row, or an AIDS-infected drug user, or an illegal alien. St. John wrote in his first epistle that we cannot love the God we have not seen if we don’t love the brother or sister we do see (1 John 4:20). And Jesus wants to help us to grow in the capacity for love by making it “easier” for us, calling us to treat others the way we would treat him, since he presumes that if we knew we were caring for him directly most of us would give it our best.
• The single most important question of our life is whether we serve or ignore Christ in our brothers and sisters. The judgment will be nothing more than a revelation of how we have used our freedom to live by Jesus’ words or not, how we have chosen to love Jesus or to reject Jesus directly or in disguise. And so it behooves us to ask:
  • When we see someone who’s hungry or thirsty, for example, do we try to help get him food or do we tell him to go get a job? Since Jesus identifies with the hungry, is it enough for us to wait for someone who is starving to approach us for food or do we go out in search of Jesus in the disguise of the man or woman or child with hunger pains?
  • Do we welcome strangers or do we resent their presence? If we would never deport Jesus or the Holy Family, or forcibly separate the infant Jesus from his parents, can we look the other way when that is clearly happening at our borders?
  • Do we clothe the naked or do we take advantage of their nudity through pornography? If we see someone without no jacket, or no shoes, or no winter hat, would we give ours?
  • Do we give preferential care for those who are sick or do we ignore them lest we catch what they have?
  • Do we care for prisoners or just think of them as a bunch of thugs toward whom our only reaction should be fear? Do we pray for those who are incarcerated, even those on death row, or do we clamor for their death like the mobs called for Pontius Pilate to give Jesus the death penalty?
• When we examine our consciences on the basis of the Gospel, probably most of us can recall those times when we really have lived up to our call as Christians to serve the “least” of our brothers and sisters with Christ-like love but also some explicit occasions when we stiffed a homeless person, or were cheap to a missionary, or refused to open our heart to a family member or colleague who really needed our assistance. This feast is an opportunity for us to ask for Jesus’ mercy that we may begin to carry out better the corporal and spiritual works of mercy. He, our King, has never failed to care for us in our need. To all of us who are hungry, he gives his own flesh to eat. To all of us who are thirsty, he quenches us with his own blood. To all of us who were alienated from his kingdom, he welcomed us and reconciled us to the Father. To those of us who were ill and afflicted, he comforted us by joining us to him in our sufferings and thereby giving our sufferings redemptive meaning and value. To those of us imprisoned by sin, he not only visited us, but freed us from our cells, breaking down the bars once and for all and showing us the way out. Jesus fulfilled each of these corporal works of mercy by giving of himself in love. This shows what the fulfillment of human life is: to give of ourselves out of love to God and others in such a way that this self-gift of ours becomes the gift of Christ himself to others. We’re called to give not just bread and water, not just medicine and clothing, but ourselves together with Christ. This is the way Christ’s kingdom will reign in us. This is the fulfillment of our prayer, “Thy Kingdom come!”

The Gospel passage on which the homily was based was: 

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