~ I do love a big anniversary celebration, and all the Latin names that go along with them! This last year, our parish celebrated its 125th anniversary, our Quasquicentennial. Next year, 2026, is our nation’s 250th birthday, our Semiquincentennial. I’m old enough to remember the Bicentennial in 1976! Next year is also the 800th anniversary of the death of St. Francis of Assisi, the octocentennial, so many pilgrims will be traveling to Italy to honor him. This year is the 1700th anniversary of the Council of Nicea, from which we Catholics received the Nicene Creed that we recite at Sunday Mass, but I haven’t found any word for a 1700th anniversary. This Sunday is an anniversary as well. It is the feast of Christ the King, and this year, we are celebrating the centennial, the100th anniversary of this feast, instituted in 1925 by Pope Pius XI. So this is a relatively new feast. Think about it… when the first parishioners of St. Margaret of Scotland gathered 125 years ago, there was no feast of Christ the King, and there wouldn’t be for another 25 years!
So, why? Why did the Pope think the Church needed this feast? Well, it was
created as a reaction to some of the prevailing attitudes of the day – a way to refute the growing threats of totalitarianism and communism and secularism – “isms” that sought to make humans, not God, the most powerful force in the world. A century later, those threats are still with us, and there are others “isms” like materialism, consumerism, fascism, even atheism. But Christ stands above all that… above all the politics of our day. Yes, we have no king, except Christ the King.
Christ’s kingdom doesn’t have a castle or a court. It isn’t a place of royal fanfare. It isn’t even found on a map. It is a kingdom that dwells within the human heart.
And its great defining landmark…is the cross.
That is where we encounter Christ the King in today’s gospel. This reading may hit us as a shock. Usually, we hear this gospel during Holy Week. But on this feast, we don’t meet this all-powerful King in a moment of splendor. We meet Him at his most humble and most humiliated. Stripped. Beaten. Dying on a cross.
Which raises the question, what kind of king is Jesus Christ? As Christians we believe that we are saved by Jesus’s life, by his activity, by what he actively taught us and did for us. We think of Jesus as one who is preaching, teaching, healing, conquering death! But, and this is the paradox, we believe that we are also saved, indeed preeminently so, by Jesus’ death, by his passivity, by what he passively endured. This is the Jesus we encounter on the cross. A king who is silent, a king who perseveres, a king who endures.
What about us? What about you?
Many of us were taught, and many of us believe, that we will inherit the kingdom of heaven by what we do. If we live a certain way, if we say certain prayers, if we do certain things, we will be with Jesus in heaven. And that is not wrong! Jesus himself told us that at the end of time, the King will sit on his royal throne and ask us if we gave food to the hungry, if we cared for those in need, if we welcomed the stranger, and visited those who were sick or in prison.
But is it not also true that we will inherit the kingdom of heaven by what we endure. By our perseverance. By our faith.
When we stay committed to Christ even when itt is difficult… when we patiently accept our own sickness or suffering… when we realize that we are often powerless in the world… when we endure difficulties, hardships, rejection, and pain… we are showing that we are followers of Christ the King, reigning from the Cross in triumph.
We pray for a kingdom of peace and justice, of course. But we also pray for a kingdom of sacrificial love, a place where the greatest honor isn’t in how much you have or how much you control…but in how much you give up.
A kingdom where true power lies…in being powerless.
It is a place where we are called to love, and to give, until there is nothing left.
It is where pure love reigns.
I mentioned at the beginning that this Feast is relatively new to the Church – but what it represents is as old as Christianity itself. St. Cyril of Jerusalem, a doctor of the Church, beautifully described how the first Christians received communion, saying that they “made their hands like a throne” to receive the Lord. The very title “Christ the King” has outlasted most of the world’s monarchies. Kings, of course, have fallen out of fashion; there are only a few real monarchs left in the world, and most of them are just figureheads.
But the one we honor and celebrate today, of course, is not. As St. Paul describes him today: he is the “firstborn of all creation…for in him all the fullness was pleased to dwell.”
This is the one we celebrate. This is the one we prepare to welcome in the coming weeks of Advent and Christmas. And, this is the one we greet this morning, with our hands outstretched like a throne.
This morning, this last Sunday of our liturgical year, we stretch out our hands. And we welcome this King of Glory into our hearts, praying like the good thief: Jesus, remember me, when you come into your kingdom, your kingdom of justice, love, and peace.