By Fr Antony Christy, SDB –
The Solemnity of Christ the King
November 21, 2021: Last Sunday of the Ordinary time
Daniel 7: 13-14; Revelation 1: 5-8; John 18:33-37
We come to the end of the Ordinary time of the year and the very end of the Liturgical Year! On this last Sunday of the liturgical year, as a culmination of our liturgical itinerary, it is apt to mark it with a celebration of the One Supreme Lord, the Lord of lords and the King of kings…Christ our Lord, to whom all glory and honour be!
Power, authority, domination of the other, ruling the world, and manipulating everything and everyone around – are some of the highest good sought after by humanity today.
All tussles of every nature – be they economic, ecological, socio-cultural, political or familial – seem to have one of these at their roots. That was one of the mindsets and systemic thinking that Jesus wanted to deconstruct – he wanted to prove to the world that you can govern without dominating, that you can be the sovereign without lording it over, that you can lead without a sense of superiority, that you can exude authority without arrogance and that you can be the King without exploiting! What a powerful message for the times we live in, and that is what we have in the Word this Sunday.
Presenting to us in wholeness the solemnity of Christ the King, the Word of God this Sunday taken together presents us with three key words to behold the central message of the celebration today. These three key words are… three terms or concepts that are present in all the three readings of the day! You will certainly read the Word again see the concordance of these terms and their concepts. What are the three key words?
The first term is the King! The first reading speaks of the Kind, the sovereign, and the eternal kingship and glory! The second reading presents to us the Ruler of the kings! The responsorial psalm invites us to declare, ‘the Lord is King!’ And in the Gospel, Jesus declares, “Yes, I am King!”.
The Lord is King – that is the Lord rules over us! That is what Jesus says too – I am King, but with a difference! I am not the king which you are imagine: the one who is the most powerful and has everyone at his beck and call. Though it is true that the Lord is the most powerful and has the whole universe at the Lord’s beck and call, that is not the salient feature of the Lord’s kingship. Because the Lord rules, but rules with love, rules by taking care, rules by providing and not exploiting or hoarding or grabbing everything for oneself!
The Lord is King, the most powerful, but the most caring and the closest to me in my own need and trouble. The Lord is King who does not order me around, but who resides within me, guides me and serves me in governing me. The Lord is King who gives me a model to follow in living with authority, the authority which comes from the Lord and an authority that is exercised in serving the other.
The second term is the Cloud! The first reading speaks of the clouds of heaven which contains the glory of the King. The second reading speaks of the Lord coming on the cloud. And in the Gospel Jesus explains that his Reign is not of this world, but of beyond! Jesus in fact offers us the clue to understand the element of the clouds.
The Lord comes in the clouds – that is the Lord transcends all boundaries! The coordinates of up and down, east and west, north and south, above and below…they do not make sense at all when it comes to the majesty and authority of the Lord. The Lord has authority over all – in time and space; that is why the Lord is the Lord of eternity; the Lord of time and timelessness, of space and spacelessness! The Lord is the Lord of past, present and future – that is why it is so meaningless to ask certain fundamental questions we have from our limited human mind – questions like, why, why me, why now and so on! We would never have an answer and we would not comprehend it even if we had it.
The easiest is to surrender to the Lord and say, ‘you know it well! you are the Lord above all!’ It may take time to arrive at that capacity to surrender; but the only thing that can give me peace is that surrender – to acknowledge the Lord who come in the clouds; the Lord above everything else!
The third term is, All! The first reading speaks of all peoples, nations and languages. The second reading refers to all the races of the earth. And the Gospel specifies, who is that ‘all’: all who are on the side of truth. The all that we speak of here may not be ‘all’ after all; it could be a little fragment of all, but what is important is only that is all that will matter.
The Lord is King of all – king of all, whether one accepts it or not! If I accept it in truth, I will be in that privileged group to remain with the eternal Reign; if I do not accept it, I will go with the rest who rush into the broad open gate to perdition, on my own choice! The Lord is the king of all who abide by truth; the truth that will set us free, the truth that is to be proclaimed and witnessed to, that truth that exists whether the world sees it or not, the truth that alone can save depending on how faithful I am to it. It is not a truth to be known, a secret to shared or a mantra to be understood – it is a life to be lived. That is why Jesus, when he was asked by the high priests ‘what is your point’, said: why do you ask me! I spoke in broad day light. Everyone heard me. Ask them. The truth is in the broad day light. The truth is everywhere! The truth is ALL. You see the truth, accept the truth, respond to the truth, serve the truth and witness to the truth, and you shall be with your King forever! I came to witness to it; and all those who are with the truth are with Me, the King!
Here therefore is the message of the feast we celebrate today: The Lord is King, King above all, the King who is served only by truth and our witness to truth! We have no escape or excuse. Let our loyalty be to the Lord and Lord alone; to truth and Truth alone!
Fr Antony Christy is a Salesian Priest from 2005, who has a Masters in Philosophy (specialisation in Religion) and a Masters in Theology (Specialisation in Catechetics). He is currently pursuing his doctoral research in Theology at Salesian Pontifical University, Rome. Walking with the Young towards a World of Peace and Dialogue is the passion that fires him.