The feast of Christ the King was added to the church calendar in 1925 by Pope Pius XI. The Pope explained that while everyone agrees that Christ is King and he reigns in the hearts of men, he also reigns in reality and has the title and the power of King as a man because it is as a man that he received from the Father “power and glory and kingdom.” Jesus Christ has two natures; he is both Son of God and Son of Man. Jesus Christ is the second Person of the Trinity; he is consubstantial with the father — that is, he has everything in common with him — and therefore he has supreme and absolute dominion over all things created.
Pius established this feast as the world was discarding the structures of Christendom. Christendom was the culture of the West in which the governments and the people governed acknowledged the primacy of the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit. In the years before Pius established this feast, humanistic and materialistic philosophies had developed, and they had begun to push away that unified understanding of Christ as active in the affairs of the secular world. These new philosophies argued that if you must believe in the Christian religion, you should pretty much keep it to yourself. With the declaration of the feast of Christ the King, Pope Pius said “no.”
In the gospel scene we have today, Jesus seems to say that his kingdom is not of this world. If we take him at his word, then perhaps it is okay for men not to consider him their earthly king. They are still free to consider him their spiritual king and king of their heart. If we read the gospel this way, then Jesus reigns in my heart but not in the world. That interpretation suited the purpose of the modern non-believers. The Pope’s message in 1925 claimed that Christ is King over the material world even if the forces of the material world refuse to acknowledge his kingship.
So what is it that makes Christ the King? In the first place, Jesus Christ was the means of creation when God created the universe, when God created all the plants and the animals and human beings, when God created space and time. So Christ is our king because it is only through him that we exist.
In the second place, Christ is our king because he will be our judge at the end of time. There will be a moment when God cancels space and time, when he removes the plants and the animals. He will not remove human beings, however, because we have eternal souls and we will exist after the end of the world. It is Christ the King who will come in judgment to welcome home those who loved him in their lives and to send on their way those who did not. We see this image clearly in the 25th chapter of the Gospel of Matthew, when people are rewarded or banished based on how they loved God and his children.
Why is it that Christ can come as our judge at the end of time? It is because of the Cross. More specifically, it is because of the crucifix. Above the altar here we have a large cross with a large crucified Jesus attached to it. It is this way — or it is supposed to be this way — in every Catholic Church. We always want to see a body on the cross because it is the sacrifice of his body and his life on the Cross that won for us the chance to love the God who made us.
Jesus Christ suffered and died on the Cross on Good Friday because he loved us so much that he was willing to give his own life as the price to be paid to save our lives from eternal death. After we had turned away from our heavenly father in the garden of Eden, we were destined for eternal wandering – separated from our heavenly father. Our father loved us so much he sent his only son, and his son Jesus Christ loved us so much he was willing to die to pay the debt that we owed to God for having turned away from him. He is our Redeemer because he paid off our debt. That’s what redemption means.
Jesus Christ is King because Jesus Christ is the eternal sacrifice that gives us the opportunity to turn back towards our heavenly father and to love him as best we can in the same way that he loves us. Now, we are not God. We are his broken and stumbling children. But he sent his son to show us how in our brokenness we can try to love him just a little bit as he loved us.
Christ the King marks the end of the church year, and we turn to the season of Advent and Christmas. We know that Christ the King is coming at the end of time as our judge, but at Christmas he comes as a baby. Anyone who has been around a newborn knows how weak and vulnerable and small a brand-new baby is. One cannot be afraid of a newborn child, but one can seek to help and protect that baby. God came to us in human form as a baby so that we could respond with love and affection and care. Later in his earthly ministry, he would show us how to live as adults with love and affection and care. And then on the Cross he showed us the price that he was willing to pay because of his love and his affection and his care for us.
Bound in Love 
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