Bound in Love

The Feast of Christ the King is relatively new, having been instituted in 1925 by Pope Pius XI. The point of the feast is relatively old, for it weighs in on the question of whether or not those who live in the world but do not recognize Jesus as their king are nonetheless his subjects. By 1925, there were an awful lot of people who lived without acknowledging Christ. Part of the doctrine of communism and socialism is denial of God. By 1925, there were millions of socialists and communists denying Christ’s kingship in their lives. And there were millions more so caught up in scientific advancement, consumerism, and capitalism that they lived as though Christ was not king even if they also considered themselves good Catholics and Protestants.

Pope Pius pretty much said, “even if you deny it, the reality is that Christ IS King and Lord of the Universe. Catholics especially should not struggle with this. From the third verse in the Gospel of John, we hear: “All things were made by him; and without him was not anything made that was made.” That means everything of creation was made by Jesus Christ, and nothing was not made by him. Only Christ. The Big Bang? Jesus was there and he made it happen. Subatomic things like quarks? Jesus, again. Our human creativity is limited to mixing around things that already exist. Only God makes something altogether new. So, all the cool technology that revolutionized industrial production ultimately came from Christ. And Pope Pius saw how frequently we humans had used these things for evil ends rather than good ends.

Money can be used for good or for evil. It’s generosity – sharing our money by our free choice – or it’s hoarding – refusing to share even from our abundance. We choose how to use money, for good or for evil.

Technology can be used for good or for evil. It’s a tractor harvesting corn or a tank running over civilians. We choose how to use technical progress for good or for evil.

What sets the limit to money or technology is either the moral laws we get from Jesus Christ as our Lord or the will to power that we get when God is dead in our lives. Good or evil, truth or lies, beauty or depravity; all these are defined by God and God alone. We retain the power to choose, a power given to us by God.

Our ethics determine how we use the things of this world, and our ethics have to come from somewhere. Christians and those with a Biblical view of the world conform to the ethics of the Bible, but the vast majority of the people in the world today conform to the ethics of the current age rather than to the ethics of God.

The message of the Scriptures for this Feast can be summarized in something we have all heard at least once in our lives: you can run but you cannot hide. We can run from God and work to keep him out of our lives – our personal lives and the life of our nation – but we won’t be able to hide from him and his judgment forever. Christ left the Earth at the Ascension, and He is coming back at the General Judgment. Since he is not physically here, we can all pretend he is not our king, but at the end of time we will discover he always was our king.

From the prophet Ezekiel we hear the promise of judgment from the Lord God: “I will judge between one sheep and another, between rams and goats.” From St. Paul, we get the progression of Christ as King and Lord of the Universe until he comes again in Judgment:

Then comes the end, when he hands over the kingdom to his God and Father, when he has destroyed every sovereignty and every authority and power. For he must reign until he has put all his enemies under his feet. The last enemy to be destroyed is death.

Finally, we get the long scene of judgment from Matthew, which opens with, “When the Son of Man comes in his glory, and all the angels with him, he will sit upon his glorious throne, and all the nations will be assembled before him. And he will separate them one from another, as a shepherd separates the sheep from the goats.”

Pope Pius made the point that in becoming fully human, Jesus Christ took on the kingship of the world, and his threefold office applies to the world. He is the law-giver, he is the judge, and he is the executive. The law he gives is the law of the Bible, and we are obliged to follow that law. He is our judge, and he is judge of everyone, which will be made clear at the end of time. And he is our shepherd who gave us the sacramental life so that we could remain connected to him even if from time to time we strayed like lost sheep.

We need to cling to the sacraments. He is our king, and he gives us a chance to enjoy life eternal as one of his sheep. If we reject him or avoid him for the whole of our lives, then we have to endure the loss of him eternally as one of the goats. It is clear, we get life eternal whether we acknowledge his kingship or not. But one path of eternal life is eternal bliss, and the other is eternal pain.

He is our King even when his vicars are not perfect. He gives us the sacraments even if our priests and bishops are not always perfect models of holiness. We are imperfect; why should our priests and bishops be that much different from us? So if we are struggling to make sense of church leadership, it is an invitation from Christ our King to trust in his reign now and for evermore. If you think it’s tough now, consider when Athanasius was the only non-Arian bishop in the East. Talk about a lonely walk, but it was a holy walk with God.

Likewise the secular world. If we are struggling to make sense of political leadership, it is an invitation to remember that Christ’s kingdom is not of this world. If you think the government is corrupt or incompetent, consider King Ahaz and his wife Jezebel. They hunted down the priests of Israel, and only the prophet Elijah was strong enough to face them down. Elijah’s strength came from his trust in God, and our strength must come from the same source.

Christ is the king, not his vicars.

He is Lord of the universe, and he will bring an end to the universe.

He invites us to live our lives under that kingship. Under that truth. Matter will disappear. Our souls will not. Kings and popes will come and go. The Kingdom of Heaven will not.