To­mor­row, the Catholic Church will ob­serve the Solem­ni­ty of Our Lord Je­sus Christ, King of the Uni­verse. It is cel­e­brat­ed on the fi­nal Sun­day of the Church’s litur­gi­cal year, just be­fore the sea­son of Ad­vent be­gins. Some oth­er Chris­t­ian de­nom­i­na­tions, e.g., the Luther­an, An­gli­can, Mora­vian, Methodist, and some Protes­tant church­es, recog­nise this feast, al­though they may use dif­fer­ent names such as “Christ the King.” This uni­ver­sal ob­ser­vance was in­sti­tut­ed in the Catholic Church on De­cem­ber 11, 1925, by Pope Pius XI when he is­sued his en­cycli­cal Quas Pri­mas – a Latin phrase mean­ing, “In the first.”

The en­cycli­cal was writ­ten to cel­e­brate the Ju­bilee Year, the 16th cen­te­nary of the Coun­cil of Nicaea, and in re­sponse to so­ci­etal prob­lems at the time. As Fr Mau­rice Emelu said: “His re­sponse to the ‘spir­it of the times,’ a term used to de­scribe a par­tic­u­lar pe­ri­od’s pre­vail­ing at­ti­tudes and be­liefs, was pro­found. He as­sert­ed Christ’s eter­nal reign as an an­ti­dote to the pow­er-hun­gry lead­ers of his day.”

Sad­ly, the world has not learned from his­to­ry. To­day, there con­tin­ues to be too many “pow­er-hun­gry lead­ers” whose self­ish­ness threat­ens the ero­sion of democ­ra­cy and hu­man rights, po­lit­i­cal/eco­nom­ic/glob­al sta­bil­i­ty, and cre­ates an in­creased po­ten­tial for con­flict. Some of these lead­ers, who say that they are Chris­tians, con­tin­ue to take ac­tion that un­der­mines de­mo­c­ra­t­ic in­sti­tu­tions and erodes the rule of law. They say they want “Peace in the world”, yet they act in an au­thor­i­tar­i­an man­ner and are not ac­count­able to the elec­torate.

This Feast should lead us to en­gage in in­tro­spec­tion. Do I see Christ as the true King of my pri­vate and pub­lic life? This is a cen­tral tenet of our Church’s so­cial doc­trine. Christ of­fers a dif­fer­ent mod­el of be­ing a King. Are we al­low­ing every di­men­sion of our lives to be gov­erned by God’s will, or are we so own way/nar­cis­sis­tic that our in­flat­ed egos lead us to place our­selves and not God at the cen­tre of our lives?

If we al­low Christ, King of the Uni­verse, to be King of our hearts, then let him take con­trol of our lives; let the Ser­mon on the Mount be our “rule of law”. If we live by the tenets of our faith, we will work tire­less­ly in His earth­ly King­dom to serve oth­ers; to stand in sol­i­dar­i­ty with the poor and vul­ner­a­ble; to do what we can for the “least” of our broth­ers and sis­ters; to en­sure that Lazarus has a place at the ta­ble. This is what is re­quired if we are to em­brace Je­sus’ great­est com­mand­ment to LOVE God and to love oth­ers as He loves us.

The late Arch­bish­op Ed­ward Gilbert CSsR, right­ly re­mind­ed us years ago that we are called, not to have a ver­ti­cal re­la­tion­ship with God, but a hor­i­zon­tal re­la­tion­ship with Him and with all His cre­ation.

Al­though Christ is the sov­er­eign ruler, my mind’s eye of­ten sees Him not sit­ting on a throne, but as my Re­deemer, hang­ing from a Cross. He made the ul­ti­mate sac­ri­fice so that we may live. The Gospel of John 3:16 states: “God so loved the world that He gave His on­ly Son, so that every­one who be­lieves in Him may not per­ish but may have eter­nal life.”

Re­flect on to­mor­row’s Gospel - Luke 23:35-43, which de­scribes the cru­ci­fix­ion of Je­sus. The Gospel read­ing fo­cus­es on the themes of hu­mil­i­ty, re­pen­tance, and God’s in­fi­nite mer­cy, as ex­em­pli­fied by the “good thief”.

On­look­ers and rulers mock Je­sus, sol­diers taunt him, and a sign is writ­ten above his cross that trans­lates to: “This is the King of the Jews”. Af­ter be­ing beat­en, tor­tured and in­ter­ro­gat­ed, Je­sus was cru­ci­fied be­tween two thieves, one of whom joined oth­ers in in­sult­ing Him. When the sec­ond one, in an act of faith and hu­mil­i­ty, asks Je­sus: “Re­mem­ber me when you come in­to your King­dom”, Je­sus re­sponds say­ing: “Tru­ly I tell you, to­day you will be with me in par­adise.”

What a pow­er­ful mes­sage of mer­cy and hope! Christ’s King­ship is one of love and com­pas­sion. No mat­ter how far we stray from the path of right­eous­ness, we can be saved be­cause of God’s mer­cy. Pope Fran­cis us­es the sto­ry to em­pha­sise that Je­sus is the “face of the Fa­ther’s mer­cy”. He of­fers an “em­brace of God” to all who seek Him with a re­pen­tant heart. God’s grace is avail­able to any­one, even at the last mo­ment of life – once we are tru­ly re­pen­tant.

May Christ the King be a mod­el of liv­ing for every­one.