Solemnity of Christ the King
November 20, 2005 (Beginning of Year of Prayer and Renewal)

    This great feast of Christ the King is the glorious conclusion of the Church’s year. A new year begins next Sunday, the First Sunday of Advent. But even though this is the end of the Church’s year, for us at St. James Cathedral, today marks the beginning of the most important year of our three-year Centennial celebration, our Year of Prayer and Renewal, our year for letting God take us to some new places on our journey of faith. Happily, a couple of ‘stars’ line up to point to the significance of this moment.

    One star is a brand new Pastoral Vision Statement for our parish that will light our path for the next five years. You will receive the Vision Statement in your homes tomorrow and I hope you will take a few minutes to read and ponder it. The statement is entitled Christ our Cornerstone and is the work of a committed group of your fellow parishioners who worked many months to produce it. They join me in offering it to you as a roadmap – or a guiding star – for our ongoing pilgrimage of faith as a parish.

    The other ‘star’ is Christ himself, the real guiding star – Christ, the faithful witness, the firstborn from the dead, the same yesterday, today, and forever. Today we honor him as our king but the readings for this Mass remind us that Christ is a king like no other. He is “The lamb who was slain,” who shed his blood, gave his life that we might have life. How vividly that is brought to our eyes by our great processional cross that led us into this celebration and which now stands over us in a silent, saving embrace! Our king is the lamb who was slain.

    And our king is also the gentle shepherd who tends his flock: seeking out the lost, bringing back the stray, binding up the injured, leading them – leading us – to green pastures beside restful waters, spreading the table before us. Our king is the good shepherd who lays down his life for the sheep.

    And our king is also, unbelievably, the hungry one, the thirsty one, the stranger, the naked one, the one who is ill and in prison. Our king is the very least of our brothers and sisters, the one whom our natural instincts tell us to avoid and ignore at any cost. We see his face every day although we do not always recognize it, and at the Judgment, this king’s face will be the face of the least of our brothers and sisters. If we recognize him now, we will recognize him then and, more importantly, he will recognize us…!

    Some of you know the story behind those three great stained-glass windows in the Cathedral’s east apse. Back in 1993 when we were preparing to renovate the Cathedral, I met by chance (more likely by Providence!) a famous German stained-glass artist by the name of von Stockhausen. I asked him if he would come to Seattle to complete those three great stained-glass windows in the east apse of the cathedral which at that time were about half as long as they are now. He told me no. He was too old, he said, and already had too much work, but I did talk him into coming to Seattle to advise us on the project.

    He came and spent a week here. Some of the time he just sat in the Cathedral, looking, thinking and praying, and some of the time he walked around this block and saw people doing the Family Kitchen, the Winter Shelter, the ESL Program, the St. Vincent de Paul outreach, and so forth. At the end of the week he said to me, “I know what we should do with those windows.” “We?” I asked with a smile. I thought you weren’t interested!” “Well, I am now,” he said. Then he went on to tell me that two of the windows should tell the story of today’s gospel, the Last Judgment from Matthew’s Gospel in the 25th chapter: ‘I was hungry and you gave me food, thirsty and you gave me drink, naked and you clothed me, sick and in prison and you visited me.’ When I asked him why, he said, “because that is what I’ve seen going on in this place all week long.” And now you know why it is that today’s gospel is captured in glass in this Cathedral. And now you know why I call Christ our guiding star: Christ the King, the unlikely king, the suffering king, the king who depends on us for food and drink, clothing, shelter and friendship is silently teaching and guiding us from those windows day after day.

    My friends, as we begin our Year of Prayer and Renewal we are fortunate to have two stars lighting our path. The first, our new Pastoral Vision Statement; the second, and by far the most important, Christ himself, Christ the King. The Year of Prayer and Renewal we begin today is the heart of our three-year Centennial celebration. Eleven years ago we splendidly renewed this cathedral and very recently we have renewed other buildings on this hilltop, but the most important renewal must be our own. And our renewal can come about only through prayer: through our being here each week to celebrate the Eucharist. Nothing is more important than that. Nothing! And then there is our participation in the many other opportunities for prayer and spiritual growth that we will be offering throughout the year. We are a good parish, a strong parish, but we have room to grow. We do. Our faith needs deepening – I know mine does -- and so does our relationship with Jesus Christ.

    Let me conclude by pointing to the third of those great windows – the middle one, the baptism window. Baptism is what makes sense of the two outer windows; baptism is our call to follow Christ, to find Christ where we least expect to find him and, finding him, to serve him with love.

    In a moment we will jump start our Year of prayer and Renewal by renewing the promises of our baptism, committing ourselves to live out those promises as active members of this great parish. Dear friends, may the coming year be one of spiritual awakening that will bring us ever closer to Jesus Christ, our shepherd, our savior, our cornerstone, our king!

Father Michael G. Ryan
Cathedral Pastor

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