Fr. Roger J. Landry
St. Agnes Church, Manhattan
Christ the King
October 25, 2020
Col 1:12-20, Jn 18:33-37
To listen to an audio recording of today’s homily, please click below:
The following text guided today’s homily:
- Today’s feast of Christ the King is, by the standard of Church history, still very young. It’s only 95 years old. It was instituted by Pope Pius XI during the 1925 Jubilee at the request of many bishops and faithful from around the globe. There was a militant atheism spreading at the time that was trying to repress belief in Christ and suppress Christian presence in the world, something that continues sadly in 2020. Just eight years before Pius XI institute the feast, Bolshevik communism had begun to show its evil head and was seeking to “free” the people from the “opium” of faith in God, which they said was a only a means to keep people subjugated.In Mexico, there had been a similar revolution against the “old order” and one of the first results was anti-clerical persecution based on a militant atheism. Religious orders were banned. Churches, monasteries, convents and other religious buildings were confiscated by the State. The Church needed to go underground and many Catholic priests, religious and lay people were martyred. Since there really was no God, they stated, the churches and Christians were just seeking greater foundation for their pursuit of political power. To counteract these lies and proclaim both thefactof Christ’s kingship and the typeof kingdom he established, the Holy Father proclaimed this feast.
- The first thing Pope Pius XI stressed was that Christ had not come to inaugurate a political but a spiritual kingdom. The Jews anticipated that when the Messiah finally came, he would rule in the way that his ancestor David had ruled. He would defeat all foreign powers and triumph over all who opposed him. After Jesus worked some of his stupendous miracles and the people were ready to put him on their shoulders and proclaim him king, he took off to other towns, so that people were able to receive him, and his kingdom, on his terms, not those false ones. In today’s Gospel we see the brutal contrast between the Kingdom Christ came to inaugurate and the political kingdom people expected. 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 bejeweled throne. He was crowned with thorns, not capped with gold and diadems. To ridicule him and Jews in general, 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 thief on his left mocked him. And all of them mocked 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 that they could comprehend.
- For most Jews at the time, Jesus’ crucifixion was the proof that he was precisely notthe long awaited Messiah-king for whom they had been waiting for centuries. Rather than using power to subjugate all those who opposed him, Jesus took their abuse and endured a horrible death to save his abusers. Ancient rulers were used to sending soldiers to die for the king’s personal aggrandizement. They were totally unprepared for a king who would serve at all, not to mention die so that his subjects would live. The Romans were likewise unprepared for a king like Jesus. When Pontius Pilate interrogated Jesus, asking him, “Are you the King of the Jews?,” Jesus answered, “My kingship is not of this world; if my kingdom were of this world, my servants would be fighting that I not be handed over to the Jews; but my kingdom is not of this world.” Rather than ask about what a kingdom not of this world means, and how it might interact with worldly power, Pilate, clueless, retorted, “So you area 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, that it was associated with force. Jesus said it is associated with truth and that the meek like him 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 reign, 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.
- Many people today, as in Jesus’ day, as in 1925, still have false ideas about Jesus. Many Christians in fact have erroneous expectations about the kingdom Christ came to establish, the way he reigns and the way he calls us to reign with him. We, too, are tempted to reject the truth of the kingdom, the service of the kingdom, the suffering of the kingdom. We, too, desire that his kingdom very much to be “of this world” rather than “not of this world.” Many, for example, spend far more time thinking about who’s in charge in Washington, or Albany or Gracie Mansion — or Beijing or Moscow, Caracas or Havana — than who’s in charge of the universe. It’s not that political realities don’t matter. They matter a lot. In some cases the political decisions we make concern matters of life and death. But as Jesus himself tried to stress during his public ministry, and as saints and martyrs have given witness over the centuries, they don’t matter nearly as much as the reality of God’s kingdom. How much time do you think Our Lady spent examining the political intrigue of whom Herod would send to administer Nazareth or whom Caesar would send as governor?
- Similarly, the mindset of a worldly kingdom can infiltrate even the Church, where many can focus way too much on ecclesiastical politics and power. They can spend more time, for example, dwelling on the names of the 13 Cardinals appointed this morning by Pope Francis than on the witness of the apostles. They can examine the political consequences of a doctored papal utterance to a Russian television producer more than they focus on living “in a manner worthy of the Lord” — chaste and holy — as St. Paul summons us all today in the Epistle. Rather than bringing the values of the Kingdom as salt, light and leaven into a world that desperately needs it, they and we can bring the frames and cynicism of politics into the Church and into our relationship with God and our fellow Christians. If I were today to use the pulpit to endorse President Trump or former Vice-President Biden, I’m convinced almost everyone would likely tell others about the homily. Some might applaud. Others might clamor for my crucifixion. But if I use the pulpit to endorse Jesus Christ and his evangelical platform, how many of us will respond and tell others? So many people work so hard to elect candidates, they give maximal contributions to political campaigns and political action committees, but how many of us work as hard and contribute as much to building up Christ’s kingdom, which is not of the world but very much in the world? This is a test for us to determine whether we’re really seeking Christ’s kingdom as it is or trying to make Jesus a political Messiah, his kingdom an earthly reality, and our faith just one form of liberation theology. This is not the response of those who belongs to the truth and listens to his voice.
- To enter into Jesus’ kingdom, Jesus himself said that we must convert and become like little children, which doesn’t mean become naïve, but it means with childlike faith in God leave acquired cynicism behind and begin to look at everything not through worldly but Christ-like lenses. St. Paul reminds us in today’s epistle that through Christ’s incarnation, passion, death and resurrection, God the Father has “delivered us from the power of darkness and transferred us to the kingdom of his beloved Son, in whom we have redemption, the forgiveness of sins.” We enter the kingdom precisely through the forgiveness of sins, through repenting and believing in the Gospel “for the kingdom of God is at hand.” The future Pope Benedict described what this conversion, this entrance into the Kingdom of Christ, means in a 2000 address to the Catechists of the world assembled in Rome. He said that conversion involves far more than just eliminating one or more bad habits. It means “to rethink, to question one’s own and common way of living; to allow God to enter into the criteria of one’s life; to not merely judge according to the current opinions. So to convert means not to live as all the others live, not do what all do, not feel justified in dubious, ambiguous, evil actions just because others do the same. It means to begin to see one’s life through the eyes of God; and so to love for the good, even if uncomfortable; not to aim at the judgment of the majority, of men, but at the justice of God. In other words, [to convert means] to look for a new style of life, a new life.”And that new way of life is the life with God in the Kingdom. Specifically about the kingdom, Cardinal Ratzinger said, “The Kingdom of God is God. The 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 pray, “Thy kingdom come!,” as we do several times a day, and to celebrate well the Feast of Christ the King, is to beg for the grace to remember that God is alive, that he is present in our life, that he is active amid the realities we face and wants to be the most present and decisive reality in each and every act of our life. To live in the Kingdom means to do everything through, with, and in Christ, including the way we look at the world and the Church and every part of it. It means to live with Christ in the world without being of it.
- 95 years ago Pope Pius XI said that he wanted to establish an annual liturgical feast precisely so that we could all gain “much strength and courage … to form [our] lives after the true Christian ideal.” He said that if Christ is truly our king, “He must reign in our minds, which should assent with perfect submission and firm belief to revealed truths and to the doctrines of Christ. He must reign in our wills, which should obey the laws and precepts of God. He must reign in our hearts, which should spurn natural desires and love God above all things, and cleave to him alone. He must reign in our bodiesand in our members, which should serve as instruments for the interior sanctification of our souls, or to use the words of the Apostle Paul, as weapons of righteousness.” In short, for Christ to reign, he must be King of my time, of my family, of my wallet, of all parts of my life. Living in his kingdom will inevitably make us more like the King we know, we love, we serve and he has sent us out to announce.
- Today, Jesus wants us to make a personal choice for him. He asks each of us, as he asked Pilate, “Do you say that I am a king on your own or because others have told you about me?” It’s not enough for him to be the King of “others” or even the King of the “universe.” It’s not enough for the pope, or the priests, or the Catechism to proclaim him sovereign Lord. It’s not enough that we join in the singing of beautiful hymns written by others, like “Christus vincit” or “To Jesus Christ Our Sovereign King.” It doesn’t suffice that we dedicate Churches to Him or whole religious institutes under this title. It’s not adequate, in order words, even that the whole Church in heaven and on earth acclaims him as the Savior and Lord. Jesus wants each of us personally and intimately to say and mean, “thy Kingdom come!,” rather than just doing so because others have told us about this reality. Jesus died in order to become your king and my king and wants to have that life-giving relationship with each of us. He wants to become the most decisive reality in our life. He wants to help us to seek his truth, to listen to his truth, to believe his truth, to live his truth and to announce his truth. For this purpose he was born. For this purpose, we were born.
- To help us take that personal stand, he comes here even more humbly than he appeared before Pontius Pilate so that he can strengthen us by helping unite our whole life to him from the inside out. What happens here is so much more important than what happens in any world capital. The King of the Universe descends for each one of us, to give his life to each of us, to give us a foretaste of the eternal kingdom where he reigns forever in the presence of the Father. Let us ask him to strengthen us to live in his kingdom, in but not of this world, and to help the whole world repent and believe for the kingdom of God is at hand. Long live Christ the King! And to him be power, praise and glory, wisdom and thanks, honor, power and strength for ever and ever. Amen” (Rev 7:12).
The readings for today’s Mass were:
A reading from the Letter of St. Paul to the Colossians
We do not cease praying for you and asking that you may be filled with the knowledge of his will through all spiritual wisdom and understanding to live in a manner worthy of the Lord, so as to be fully pleasing, in every good work bearing fruit and growing in the knowledge of God, strengthened with every power, in accord with his glorious might, for all endurance and patience, with joy giving thanks to the Father, who has made you fit to share in the inheritance of the holy ones in light. He delivered us from the power of darkness and transferred us to the kingdom of his beloved Son, in whom we have redemption, the forgiveness of sins. He is the image of the invisible God, the firstborn of all creation. For in him were created all things in heaven and on earth, the visible and the invisible, whether thrones or dominions or principalities or powers; all things were created through him and for him. He is before all things, and in him all things hold together. He is the head of the body, the church. He is the beginning, the firstborn from the dead, that in all things he himself might be preeminent. For in him all the fullness was pleased to dwell, and through him to reconcile all things for him, making peace by the blood of his cross [through him], whether those on earth or those in heaven.
The continuation of the Gospel according to St. John
Pilate went back into the praetorium and summoned Jesus and said to him, “Are you the King of the Jews?” Jesus answered, “Do you say this on your own or have others told you about me?” Pilate answered, “I am not a Jew, am I? Your own nation and the chief priests handed you over to me. What have you done?” Jesus answered, “My kingdom does not belong to this world. If my kingdom did belong to this world, my attendants [would] be fighting to keep me from being handed over to the Jews. But as it is, my kingdom is not here.” So Pilate said to him, “Then you are a king?” Jesus answered, “You say I am a king. For this I was born and for this I came into the world, to testify to the truth. Everyone who belongs to the truth listens to my voice.”
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