Christ the King (B)
(Daniel 7:13-14;
Apocalypse 1:5-8; John 18:33-37)
In our
readings today we are given a magnificent portrait of Him Who is our Lord and
Saviour, Jesus the Christ, Son of God become Son of Man:
As the
visions during the night continued, I saw One like a son of man coming on the
clouds of heaven; when He reached the Ancient One and was presented before Him,
the One like a Son of Man received dominion, glory, and kingship; nations and
peoples of every language serve Him. His
dominion is an everlasting dominion that shall not be taken away, His kingship
shall not be destroyed.
Behold,
He is coming amid the clouds, and every eye will see Him, even those who
pierced Him. And all the peoples of the
earth will lament Him. Yes. Amen.
And, in
answer to Pilate’s question, Jesus pictured Himself as follows:
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.
Jesus is,
therefore, most worthily our King, and today we gratefully celebrate His
kingship and rule. He came, most humbly,
to bear witness to -- that is to proclaim and manifest in word and deed, in His
death as throughout His life – the ultimate truth about God and His plan of
salvation for us:
Father,
the hour has come; glorify Your Son so that the Son may glorify You, since You
have given Him authority over all people, to give eternal life to all whom You
have given Him. (John 17:2)
He came
-- a King in fact and truth though not in appearance -- because His
proclamation of the truth had to be, on the one hand, divinely authoritative
and unambiguous, admitting neither frustration nor failure in the fulfilment of
its purpose; and on the other hand, as Son of man, offering that compassion and
understanding which can draw sinners to repentance and forgiveness, before then
forging -- by the gift of His most Holy Spirit -- cords of love capable of
leading all His faithful ones to follow in His footsteps along His way to the
ultimate vision of the Goodness and Beauty of God, His Father:
And this
is eternal life, that they may know You, the only true God, and Jesus Christ
whom You have sent. (John
17:3)
As King,
therefore, He not only proclaimed the ultimate Truth, He also manifested that
Truth, as Son of Man, in all its sublime reality, because He Personally was and
is, the eternal Truth:
I am the Way, the Truth, and the Life.
But did
not St. John also tell us that, God is
love?
Indeed he did, and this is just how he put it:
We have
known and believed the love that God has for us. God is love, and he who abides
in love abides in God, and God in him. (1 John
4:16)
That
means that those who have known and believed the love that God has for us, that
is, those who have believed in Christ’s proclamation of and witness to, the only
true God, have God -- Who is love -- abiding in them.
Therefore,
God is Truth in the Church’s proclamation and protection of the Gospel
message, and He is Love in the hearts of those who receive and live by
that Gospel of Good News and Hope; thus we can appreciate that truth is not to
be merely heard and intellectually acknowledged, and likewise, that love is not
suitably expressed by overly emotional outpourings. God’s Truth is motivated by and expresses
His love; and His Love is informed and guided by His truth in order to
fulfil God’s purpose as Isaiah and the Psalmist tell us:
My word
that goes forth from My mouth shall not return to Me void, but it shall
accomplish what I please, and it shall prosper in the thing for which I sent it. (Isaiah
55:11)
Mercy and
truth have met together; righteousness and peace have kissed. (Psalm
85:10).
It was
strange, however, to hear the author of the book of Revelation so emphatically
assuring us that, when our Lord and Saviour will come in His glory:
Every eye
will see Him, even those who pierced Him.
And all the peoples of the earth will lament Him. Yes.
Amen.
His
coming will cause all the tribes of
people on earth to mourn, every eye
to lament? Obviously -- it would seem to
us -- all those who killed Him might well mourn at His return in glory; but why
will it be that all will lament,
even those who loved Him?
This will
be because of the Truth; since it is, indeed, Gospel truth that all, each and every one of us on earth
have sinned, and of ourselves are sinners:
There is
none righteous, no, not one; none seeks after God. All have turned aside; there is none who does
good, no, not one. (Romans 3:10-12)
Those who
receive the Truth proclaimed by the Lord’s coming, will see Him and lament the
evil that was done Him; they will lament and mourn both out of love for Him,
and out of shame and regret for their own complicity in such behaviour. Consequently, in their case, those words of
Scripture will be fulfilled:
You have
turned for me my mourning into dancing; You have put off my sackcloth and
clothed me with gladness, that my glory (soul) may sing praise to You and not
be silent. O LORD my God, I will give
thanks to You forever. (Psalm 30:11-12)
Those,
however, who did not receive, would not embrace, that Truth made manifest, will
mourn simply and solely because of His return: they will have neither love for
nor sympathy with Him; only continuing rejection of Him and solicitude for
self.
The
kingdom of God, Jesus once said, is among you.
And so, today as everyday, the question -- the drama -- of truth and its
reception is going on around us in society, within us as a community, and in
the secret depths of our own, individual, hearts. How do we, can we, should we, respond to
God’s truth revealed to and treasured in Mother Church?
There are
those, who seem or are said to think that truth is above all to be known with
our minds, hopefully, as extensively and as accurately as possible; and, at the
other extreme, there are others who think that love is all that matters. Let us consider these two attitudes a little
more closely.
Many
Catholics are perfectly content with themselves when they go to Mass and
receive the Sacraments on the appointed days, just as they have always done:
they say they know the faith: they were taught it at school or received it in
the instruction given them by a priest, say at conversion and baptism, or when
they were preparing for marriage.
Thereafter, they merely fulfil the obligations they originally accepted
as part and parcel of the faith. There
we have examples of the truth proclaimed being received with but a minimum
of heart commitment: believers doing what they were ‘originally’ taught, or
‘have always’ believed but with a minimum of loving commitment. And at the head of such disciples can be
found clerics of all levels who will ‘say’ Mass or administer the Sacraments in
double-quick time; they will present Catholic doctrine and spirituality to
God’s catholic people with words that are nothing more than bloodless
transcripts of Jesus’ words of life or the experiences of saints revered throughout the Church: too often,
that is, mere abstract truths or cold mental concepts, apparently standing
upright and firm only because they are backed by ‘authority’.
On the
other hand, those of the contrary inclination are only content when they can
give themselves obsessively to personal devotions, enthusiastically to active
social involvement of an emotive kind, or to personal and somewhat secretive
piety and prayers: these have a full heart, indeed, but not infrequently, are
dismissive of, or somewhat horrified by, the idea that they might have any true
need for better appreciation or greater understanding of their faith. These Catholics rarely have any doubts about
themselves, they do not experience any need to ask about, search for, a deeper
understanding and appreciation of what they think they already know and most
firmly believe. They are totally
satisfied with their own warm heart, and fully approve of and uphold the
sincerity of their own intentions, and cannot avoid proclaiming themselves
along with their understanding of the Gospel of Jesus. And yet, Jesus, early on in His public
ministry, had lovingly yet unhesitatingly declared of Samaritans encountered in
His travels:
You
worship what you do not know, we worship what we know. (John
4:21)
How many
sects, originally enthusiastic disciples of Jesus, have separated themselves
from Mother Church over subsequent centuries because of like ignorance of the
will of God and the fullness of the maturity of Christ!
People of
God, Jesus is come to bear witness to the truth for us, and He tells us:
Everyone who is of the truth hears My voice.
For
Jesus’ disciples, His truth is ever a living and loving issue whose beauty is
to be unceasingly and increasingly admired, not just as a memory or an
attitude from the past however firmly fixed, but as a continuing invitation to
ever deeper and more personal love and trust.
Worship in His name can never be either exact ritual or personal
emotionalism carefully procured and stoked-up, because it is essentially a
living and open-ended total commitment to Jesus, by the Holy Spirit, for the
Father.
However,
there is a danger today that threatens to bring humanistic emotionalism into
our personal relationship with Jesus.
Now Jesus takes us alone with Himself to the Father:
Peter
turned and saw the disciple following whom Jesus loved he said to Jesus, ‘Lord,
what about him?’ Jesus said to him,
‘What concern is it of yours? You follow
Me.’ (John 21:
20-22)
In Him
alone, by His Spirit, we ultimately commit ourselves personally to the Father
in worship; with Him, by His
Spirit, we meet our neighbour in charity, for the glory of the Father.
So,
People of God, on this feast of Christ the King of Truth let us open both our
minds and our hearts to Him in the Gospel proclamation, that proclamation which
continues to this very day to be made for us and offered to us in and through
Mother Church. It is not just to be
remembered as ammunition for argument; we have to increasingly appreciate and
love it, by committing ourselves to live for it and in response to it. Only thus will we allow God’s purpose to be
fulfilled in our lives.
Jesus
assures us that with God, Truth and Love are one. Therefore, let the Roman
Curia treasure the Gospel message they lovingly protect as God’s Truth; and let
the preachers of Mother Church authentically understand the Truth they proclaim
as God’s Love. And let us all recall
those further words of Jesus to the effect that, what God has joined together
none of us should ever separate.