IS Jesus your King?

+ J. M. J. +

Homily Outline for the Solemnity of Our Lord Jesus Christ, King of the Universe, Year B

The liturgical year draws to a close as the days shorten and winter settles in. Next week we will begin a period of intense expectation and preparation: Advent. At this moment of transition, the Church reminds us with solemn joy that Our Lord Jesus Christ is King of Heaven and Earth, King of the Universe, King of all that is! “His dominion is an everlasting dominion that shall not be taken away, his kingship shall not be destroyed.” My brothers and sisters in Christ… this is thoroughly good news!

Perhaps the idea of a king is something old-fashioned for us—we don’t have many kings anymore. We attempt to govern ourselves by a messy democratic process that has brought our nation unprecedented wealth and stability, along with growing isolation, the rapid breakdown of the family, and increasingly high rates of suicide and addiction. We are in the midst of an astounding and difficult to comprehend holocaust of the unborn: in the last 40 years alone, in the United States, we have killed at least 10 unborn infants for every Jewish person killed during the Holocaust. These tragedies are just as much a part of our American experiment as voting and the Civil Rights movement.

Our feast, then, is meant to address our modern discontent. Jesus Christ was proclaimed Messiah even during His life, the anointed one, the Son of David the King. The title is ancient, but this liturgical feast only goes back to 1925 when the tide of secularism and the rejection of God was rising in Europe and among the elite. Just two years later, in 1927, Blessed Miguel Pro, a Jesuit priest, was executed by the Mexican government for his faith. Like thousands killed during that terrible persecution just 90 years ago, he died with the words “Viva Cristo Rey” on his lips, "Long Live Christ the King." His feastday was on Friday.

Now that tide of aggressive secularism has washed all before it and has inundated our businesses, schools, homes, and youth. Individualism has tempted us, rather successfully, to declare ourselves King: king of our lives, our pleasures, our decisions, our sins. More and more of us fall down in worship before strange and yet all-too-familiar gods: comfort, pleasure, power, wealth, distraction. Our allegiance is frequently to our own convenience. The famous Sinatra song, “I did it my way,” is certainly the anthem of Hell. Worshipping our whims and bowing down before our passing fancies leads us onto the broad road away from God and into bitter emptiness.

So how do we respond to these attractive temptations and traps? What does the Church want from us, or for us, on this Solemnity of Christ the King? I believe we are being invited to renew our allegiance to Jesus Christ, or perhaps even offer that allegiance for the first time. This is not primarily an emotional experience, although we may indeed feel some strong emotion. Rather, it is an act of the will, a decision: whom do we follow? Whom do we serve? Whom do we seek?

This year, today’s feast falls in the midst of the feasts of three different martyrs. I already mentioned Bl. Miguel Pro, Friday’s memorial, and Saturday it was St. Andrew Dung-Lac and companions, some 117 Vietnamese Catholics killed between 1820 and 1862. If the 25th were not a Sunday, it would be the memorial of St. Catherine of Alexandria, a respected philosopher who lived in what is now Egypt, and having become Christian, gave her life as a martyr in the 4th century… in every time and place, there have been men, women, and children whose allegiance to Christ the King stood firm even in the face of torture and death. Perhaps we don’t make our choice in such dramatic circumstances, but it boils down to the same basic question: Whom do we follow? Whom do we serve? Whom do we seek?

As Jesus tells Pilate, His kingdom is not of this world. He is not capricious, rapacious, lustful, or bloodthirsty. But, He is King… He is powerful, with the perfect gentle sweet power of Love. He does defend us, and He does teach us. He testifies to the truth by His life, and by His words. He is the Alpha, the Omega, the one who is, and who was, and who is to come, the Almighty.

On this feast I think the Church wants us to seriously ask ourselves the question: Is Jesus the Lord of my Life? It’s not a question we answer just once… but we do need to give an answer. To give full allegiance to Christ and His Church is a lifelong journey, a process that never ends until the moment of our death… but it is a process and journey that must begin somewhere, in fact, right where you’re sitting, here and now… once again, or perhaps for the first time, to choose Christ, to respond to His choice of you.

If I am king of my own life, or if I bow down before comfort or pleasure or power or wealth or fame… well, then Jesus is not Lord of my Life. If I like Jesus, but I ignore His Law, His commandments, His teaching… then Jesus is not Lord of my life. If I like Jesus, but I ignore His Living Body the Church, if I feel comfortable picking and choosing the parts I like and the parts I tacitly ignore… well, Jesus didn’t set up shop with a bunch of disconnected individuals, He founded a Church, a cohesive living community that has survived down to this present day, into which we entered by our baptism. By the power and protection of the Holy Spirit, the Church has worked through broken men and women like you and me to bring us the Bible, the inspired Word of God -- no Church, no Bible -- to bring us clear and sound teaching in the midst of the storms of every age, and to bring us the abundant grace of the sacraments. Jesus is the Head, the Church is His Body, and we members of that Body by our baptism. But if we chart our own course and reject the Church, well, then, we have rejected Jesus, King and Head, as well.

Let us close by listening once again to Jesus’ loving words to Pontius Pilate, that strangely modern and skeptical man seeking to get ahead in the world, “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.” May we belong to the truth, in our thoughts, words, and deeds. By God’s grace may we serve Our Lord Jesus Christ, King of the Universe, and thus live in His Kingdom.

+ A. M. D. G. +