This
feast of Christ the King has its origins in the years between the two
world wars of the twentieth century when various forms of
totalitarianism were on the rise: Fascism in Italy, National Socialism
in Germany, and Soviet Communism. As a counterpoint to those godless
grabs for power that denied and trampled on basic human dignity, Pope
Pius XI boldly placed the figure of Christ the King, the most unlikely
of kings – a king with no armies, no weapons other than the truth, and
no territorial ambitions other than human hearts.
The world situation has changed dramatically
since 1925 when this feast was inaugurated, but the need for the feast
is no less pressing. Soviet Communism, Nazism, and Fascism may have
disappeared – or maybe not - but other frightening ‘isms’ have not.
Think of the present alarming rise of nationalism, racism, and sexism.
Each of these represents a serious distortion of the truth. Each cries
out for a confrontation with truth like the one between Jesus and Pilate
in today’s gospel.
The confrontation began as a conversation, or
more accurately, an interrogation. Pilate, representing the
imperial power of the Roman Caesar, asks Jesus a simple question: “Are
you the king of the Jews?” Jesus, though on trial for his life, is
serenely in charge of this exchange. He answers by questioning Pilate:
What prompts your question? ‘Are you asking this on your own or are you
just repeating what you’ve heard from others?’ At that point Pilate
shifts to another line of questioning: “What have you done?” he asks
Jesus. But Jesus calmly stays with the original question: ‘You asked me
if I was a king. Let me tell you about my kingdom. It’s not what you
think. My kingdom is not about power, it’s about truth’: “The reason I
was born; the reason I came into the world is to testify to the truth.”
And with those words, Jesus put Pilate on trial. He confronted him
with the most important question of all; namely, which is greater –
power or truth?
For me, this question is where the feast of
Christ the King gets its present and perennial relevance. It may have
been a twentieth century inspiration but it’s a twenty-first century
imperative because power is still more highly valued than truth - as is
so evident from the political currents awash in our country and across
the world. And so we need a feast that runs counter to all the ethical,
political and social vacuums that suck from our world so much that is
good and beautiful and noble and true. Pilate’s cynical question to
Jesus, “What is truth?” was a chilling foreshadowing of today’s moral
relativism where there are no answers, only questions; no truth, only
what works.
But Christ the prisoner, hands bound before
Pilate, puts the lie to all this. He is bound, yes, but he is free. And
he freely speaks the truth to power. And his freedom no one can take
from him because his is an inner freedom grounded in one thing only: the
truth. “For this I was born,” he says to Pilate, “and for this I came
into the world, to testify to the truth. Everyone who belongs to
the truth hears my voice.”
My friends, those words of Jesus say it all.
“Everyone who belongs to the truth hears my voice.” Without equivocation
or qualification, Jesus identifies his voice, his Word, with the truth.
He dares to say that there is such a thing as truth and that he himself
embodies it. That’s quite a claim and it’s what gives this feast of
Christ the King particular relevance for our moment in time, for one of
the great challenges of our moment is to find the truth, and Jesus says
we find it by hearing his voice - by letting his word, his gospel,
pierce and penetrate our consciences for, my friends, the gospel is just
words on a page until it takes flesh in people’s lives, in our lives.
And when it does, we begin to see things
differently – radically differently. Our outlook begins to change – the
way we look at everything: our world, our work, our responsibilities,
our relationships, our faith and its many demands. Nothing stays the
same. How different our lives are when we take the gospel of Jesus
seriously. Really seriously. It cuts through everything like a two-edged
sword, lays bare our deepest thoughts, motivations, fears. It also
liberates us – frees us to leave our comfort zone and to follow wherever
it is that Jesus wants to lead us.
My friends, it all begins in the court of our
conscience but it is cultivated in this community of faith we call the
Church. Our response to the gospel is always personal, yes, but it comes
to life in community. We live it - carry it out - in community. That’s
why we’re here; that’s why we keep coming here; that’s why, on the
Lord’s Day, we gather as a community of faith around the altar of
Christ’s sacrifice, the table of the Eucharist. Here, in a unique and
powerful way, we encounter Christ who is our life, our truth, our King.
And this Christ and his gospel can change everything: change hearts,
change minds, change us, and through us, even change the world!
Father Michael G. Ryan
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